A Call to Action
Though he’s one of the wine world’s great talkers, Ulli Stein knows that words alone will not be enough to confront the economic and spiritual crises currently—and urgently—threatening the great traditions of Mosel winemaking (including sites such as Bremmer Calmont, pictured above). Below is a call to action from Ulli, already generating significant response in the region, here translated in full.
Thorns instead of vines!
Alf/Mosel, January 2010
Viticulture on the Mosel has already experienced plenty of crises—and survived! But the ultimate endgame now threatens those old Riesling vines in the greatest steep slate slopes throughout our region.
While on the one hand thousands of euros are spent at wine auctions for a single bottle of Mosel Riesling, and though for many growers who market their own wines all is well, the price for 1000 liters of Riesling (in barrel) now sits at 600 euros. Many part-time winemakers, who have long worked age-old vineyards of extreme steepness and scenic beauty, are finally giving up. The reasons are not only economic but also psychological: if the oft-mentioned “heroic” work in the steepest vineyards not only fails to generate profit but also engenders massive losses, then that signals, in the end, an extremely low regard not only for the work but also for the people engaged in it.
The causes of this unfortunate development are diverse and complex. Mistakes have been made by all involved, including Weinkellereien, winemakers, consultants, and lawmakers. A sampling of what’s gone wrong:
• in the past, too many Weinkellereien (merchant houses/négociants) have placed too little value on quality, have bought and sold junk (as long as the price is low!), and have led the names “Riesling” and “Mosel” into the bargain bins of supermarket shelves, from which they can no longer escape.
• many winemakers have fashioned their wines accordingly, accepted any price, shared their frustrations above all with their children, in word and deed emphatically warning them against the life of a wine grower.
• consultants and lawmakers have fixated single-mindedly on sugar content as the exclusive criteria for quality; propagated the “wrong” varietals (like Kerner); and encouraged questionable winemaking methods (i.e., sweet reserve, de-acidification, etc.)
• and at the end of the day, roughly 90% of all consumers refuse to pay more than 2.99 euros for a bottle of wine, regardless of whether the label indicates Riesling from steep slopes or Pinot Grigio from the Po Valley.
This all sounds rather pessimistic, though sadly with good reason. Half of all vines in my village of St. Aldegund will be grubbed up in the coming months, and in the next two years it will be another quarter. A similar fate awaits the neighboring villages (Alf, Bullay, Neef). Most of those winemakers who are still active are over 60 years old, and for many there is no successor in sight.
Soon the two-thousand-year-old winemaking landscape will cease to exist in many places along the Mosel. Whether the oft-mentioned tourists will still come to gaze upon blackberry bushes remains to be seen.
Despite positive changes on the Mosel, such as rising wine quality among those growers who sell and market their own wines; a slowly increasing number of apprentices; the re-cultivation of vineyards (such as Bremmer Calmont); and such large-scale collaborations as Weingut Kallfelz’s purchase and renovation of the local teaching and research station, viticulture in many sectors is seriously imperiled. Faced in the coming years with the threat of 3000 hectares of soon-to-be-fallow steep sites—one-third of the entire Mosel region—slogans of perseverance (“we have to look to the future, not bemoan what is lost”) will be of as little use as supplication at the feet of the Kellereien. Such approaches obstruct our view of the bitter reality and prevent effective counter-measures, among them the following small and feasible goals:
1. Every estate that directly markets its own wines but that also purchases grapes, must, or wine from colleagues should pay—for Riesling from steep slopes with at least 70° Oechsle—a baseline price of 1200 euros, and for each degree increase in Oecshle an additional 50 euros more. (We’ve been doing this successfully for years with several hectares of steep sites and receive, for a fair price, grapes of corresponding quality.)
2. Every grape-grower who wants to uproot vineyards in steep sites on account of low prices should speak to local winemakers in an effort to achieve better prices. (See Point 1.)
3. Faced with an offer of 60 cents per liter of Riesling, bulk grape-growers should consider simply refusing to sell. Not for that price! Come what may! Hold out! Maintain a measure of self-respect!
4. In-house and intra-estate reorganization (in the case of older winemakers of declining strength) in which lesser sites are relinquished in favor of those steep slopes that define the Mosel landscape and are responsible for the reputation of her wines.
5. The quality of wine produced by those estates that sell and market their own wines must be improved through simple, cost-friendly measures, among them a more selective and—as a rule—later harvest, lower yields, little or no fertilizer, controlled fermentation, etc. At the same time, the value—now also reflected in the glass!—of these steep-slope Rieslings must result in higher prices. There can be no more 3 euro Riesling Spätlese from famed steep sites (like Bremmer Calmont), no more high-quality estates consistently undercutting each other’s prices.
6. Winemakers can and must develop more courage and self-confidence; stand more firmly behind their product; demand from customers an appropriate price for quality; and not tell themselves “I’ll never be able to do that” without ever having tried.
7. Full-time estates should more carefully consider the possibility of taking over certain sites, bearing in mind especially the increased costs of helicopter spraying when, within a given vineyard, only a patchwork of plots remain under cultivation. (Fallow sites need not be sprayed, of course, so the helicopter is continually turning its machine on and off, increasing both the time and cost of the operation, and those costs are shared among vineyard-owners. As a cost-cutting measure, the helicopter service is often dropped, resulting in a further incentive for growers to give up on steep sites.)
8. All winemakers and non-winemakers, including those who rent rooms to tourists, hotel and restaurant proprietors, and other affiliated businesspeople should place more value on the importance of the steep slopes and embrace and communicate that value accordingly.
9. Finally, all involved should treat each other with less envy and spite and instead aim toward solidarity and tolerance.
The preceding sober depiction is not intended to aid and abet resignation, but instead aims to snap people to attention and to serve as a call to action. On the heels of recent notable examples of vineyard rescue must follow more of the same. It is at least worth a try—if not on our own account, at least for the old Riesling vines. They can’t do a thing about it! And they deserve our protection from thorns.
Dr. Ulrich Stein
Winemaker and Oenologist
Alf/Mosel
(Translated by Dan Melia, with assistance from David Schildknecht)
Tags: Bergrettung, Bremmer Calmont, David Schildknecht, Mosel Politics, Stein
January 12, 2010 at 8:49 am
I agree fully with what Dr.Stein wrote above. I´m always on the sides of a wine-grower who works hard, bears the risk and gets paid not enough for his work.
However – there are other reasons! I´ve been pulled off German (Mosel) Riesling 15 years ago because without digging heavily into the enormous details of German vineyards you never know
A. where´s the wine exactly from (great problem: Grosslage versus Einzellage)
B. how the wine actually will taste (problem: trocken/dry, halbtrocken/half-dry, lieblich/half-sweet, süß/sweet ….. etc.)
C. is it really 100% wine – or partially grape-juice (Süssreserve ….)
People often say: Burgundy is too complicated for me!
But Burgundy made some important changes – and now it´s fairly clear a) if the content of a bottle is Grand Cru, 1er cru or Village wine b) which grape varieties it´s made of (usually Pinot Noir, rarely Gamay – or Chardonnay resp. – rarely Pinot blanc/Aligoté c) that it will taste definitely DRY !
I´m sure that steps in that direction would help the German (Mosel) Riesling in the future – much more than bottling two or three different Rieslings from the same site, only distinguished by the AP-number …..
Riesling from very steep sites shouldn´t be cheap …
but Riesling of a certain price level should be defined regarding exact origin, taste (dryness, sweetness) and deliver a certain quality ….
The latter points are not always the case …. and that´s certainly a major part of the problem.
January 12, 2010 at 8:54 am
Go Uli!
January 13, 2010 at 9:44 am
Hi Gerhard,
Thanks for your comment on our blog.
a. We agree with you that Einzel- and Grosslagen still create confusion among consumers who don’t know the difference between the two. The latter should never have been created, much less to purposely look like single-vineyard names.
b. If the grower keeps to the designations, trocken (dry) and halbtrocken (off dry), then it’s easier to know how the wine will taste. This is no different than in Vouvray with sec, demi-sec, and moelleux. (This is assuming, of course, that the consumer knows that most Mosel Riesling without trocken or halbtrocken listed on the label have more noticeable residual sugar.) It becomes more tricky with the non-legal term “feinherb.” This could be the equivalent of sec-tendre in Vouvray. For some growers on the Mosel, feinherb replaces halbtrocken, i.e., their Riesling are no more than 18 g/l RS or close to this marker (e.g., Knebel). Others use it to mean anywhere from 10 up to 45 g/l RS (e.g., Lauer). As with all the aforementioned designations, so much has to do with acidity and taste impressions. More confusing is the movement among various growers with their own internal designations or lack thereof. This is a problem in Alsace, as well. With riper wines from the changing climate, it’s no longer possible to discern by the alcohol alone if a wine might be dry or off-dry based on higher alcohol levels.
c. Most serious wine growers on the Mosel avoid sweet reserve.
Burgundy is a great example. I would love for the Mosel to return to yore. Last week I tasted at Ulli Stein’s father’s home a 1947 Kammer from a now-defunct grower. The stylish label had only the vintage, the site (without the village name), and the grower (usually prefixed with Wachstum, meaning “Growth”). There was no mention of Riesling (this was clear back then!), of Prädikat, or of sweetness (it was dry or off-dry). Today, this wine would probably be designated as St. Aldegunder Klosterkammer Riesling Spätlese trocken. (Andreas Adam of A.J. Adam, in Dhron, does it like in the old manner, or in Burgundy, for his top off-dry and dry bottlings from Hofberg, and puts the legal lingo on a back label.)
Even growers who prefer to make just the one “dry-tasting wine” from a certain site, such as Van Volxem or Heymann-Löwenstein (two well-known VDP estates that purposely have avoided the GG category), cannot be considered necessarily dry either. Most of their wines are without a Prädikat and above the arbitrary but legal mark of 9 g/l RS. (As much as I respect their position, the line for trocken has to be drawn somewhere.) And if you’re a guest at a restaurant (to quote a good friend’s example) and you order smoked fish and pick up the wine list and see that, for example, Van Volxem is listed under dry Riesling, you’ll be disappointed to find out, if you’re unaware, that it’s probably too sweet for your particular course.
There’s also been a movement among the Grosser Ring (Mosel VDP) and growers outside this well-known growers’ association towards doing away with Prädikat designations for their dry Riesling. This calls for growers within the VDP to declare their best dry wines as GG (e.g., Clemens Busch), supposing the site in question is classified by the VDP as Erste Lage (First Growth).
Even Carl von Schubert of Maximin Grünhaus, a non-VDP member, has renamed his Abtsberg and Herrenberg Spätlesen trocken as Alte Reben trocken (”Old Vines dry”) beginning with the 2008 vintage to go along with his Superior (off-dry) bottlings from these two respective sites. Some VDP members have tried to resist the GG route, such as Christoph Tyrell of Karthäuserhof, because it entails different nomenclature, certain price points, and image factors (such as the optional heavy-embossed bottle). If a VDP member chooses to bottle their top dry wine as GG, they no longer can continue bottling a dry Kabinett or Spätlese from this first-class-designated site with that vineyard name on it, even though Kabinett or Spätlese trocken have just as much tradition (i.e., going back to the 1971 Wine Law) as their sweeter counterparts, which are better known in export markets. Yet, growers who don’t belong to the VDP or have vineyards that are not defined by the VDP as “Erste Lage” are ignored by many label-drinkers, journalists, and grand-tasting organizers. It’s also important to note that GG is not necessarily higher in quality than another grower’s Spätlese trocken, much less their Kabinett trocken.
I don’t think it’s wrong to make different wines (dry, off-dry, or sweet) from the same site. There’s a culture for this here on the Mosel with the long and late harvests, the multiple vineyard passes, and the grape variety (Riesling). And it’s no different than in Vouvray or other Loire appellations, for instance.
As we are both fans of Rhône wines, such as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we have to admit that there is also plenty of plonk and stylistic differences there, too. I also find the hype surrounding certain Châteauneufs and rising alcohol levels, even among classic domaines such as Clos des Papes, troublesome.
Please refer to Joachim Krieger’s essay in our catalog for more insight on this topic: http://www.moselwinemerchant.com/download/MoselWineMerchant2009.pdf.
April 15, 2010 at 1:25 pm
[...] The 1971 Wine Law created today’s Prädikat system by linking the ripeness levels of the grapes at harvest to different terms. Kabinett has the lowest level (73° Oechsle on the Mosel) and, as mentioned above, can be fermented dry, off-dry, or sweet. In other words, two scales exist: one indicating ripeness of the grapes at harvest, and the other measuring the residual sugar in the finished wine. This was the case from the outset, that is German wine-makers could produce Kabinett trocken and halbtrocken (or feinherb) as well as those with more noticeable residual sugar. In any of its variations, it’s meant to be lighter than a Spätlese from the same producer and vintage, for the grapes were picked earlier. Because there is no maximum Oechsle or alcohol level, most Riesling Kabinette are actually (declassified) Spätlesen and Auslesen in must weight. Producers often want to impress journalists this way. In addition, climate change and certain vintages have had extreme ripeness levels early on, which results in both higher must weights and sweetness levels. So much depends on the time of picking and waiting for physiologically ripe grapes. Furthermore, the trend nowadays, especially among the elite growers’ association called the VDP, is to phase out the terms trocken and halbtrocken for Riesling Kabinett and other Prädikat wines in favor of a Gutswein/Gutsriesling (Estate wine), an Ortswein (village wine), and a Grosses Gewächs (grand cru). Although the reasoning makes sense, it brings with it all sorts of other complications. [...]
May 19, 2010 at 2:41 pm
[...] of the Lower Mosel (also known as the Terrassenmosel) have terraced sites, as does the Mittelrhein. Many sites in both regions are being left abandoned and bramble grow there instead of [...]
June 2, 2010 at 7:43 am
[...] the current issue of The Art of Eating, Dan was asked to write a short piece on Ulli Stein’s manifesto, which he had translated (with the assistance of David Schildknecht) and posted on our blog in [...]
July 16, 2010 at 11:36 am
[...] What also seems to be lost by the press and even the famous wine growers’ association, the VDP, is the much bigger crisis that’s affecting all the Mosel region, namely the loss of viticulture on the Mosel’s steep slate slopes. [...]
September 7, 2010 at 3:58 pm
[...] David Schildknecht’s 2009 vintage profile on Beaujolais, the following passage reminded me of the similar crisis facing grape-growers in the Mosel region. It is by now commonplace that Beaujolais is a region in crisis; and the ramifications of so many [...]