New Steinmetz retro label will adorn bottles beginning with the 2009 vintage.

In late December, I was invited to an impressive back-vintage tasting of diverse Mosel Riesling at Weingut Günther Steinmetz in Brauneberg. Because I foolishly discarded my scribbled notes, I cannot recall all the fine details of the event, but here’s what I did remember:

After all the bottles had been carefully uncorked and lined up, we began with two 1971s, a highly sought-after vintage (and my birth year!), and worked back through the decades to a 1921 Piesporter. Several of the wines, including a 1971 Graacher Himmelreich (Bergweiler-Prüm), 1952 Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr (Ferdinand Haag), and several Wehlener (1940 Lay, 1938 Rosenberg, and 1937), were sourced from a cellar in Mülheim. The Steinmetzes had vintages from the early sixties and late fifties on hand. And Gernot Kollmann, who now runs Immich-Batterieberg, had brought six different vintages directly from the estate’s cellar in Enkirch.

The 1971 Graacher was oxidized, but the ’71 Enkircher Ellergrub from Immich was in fine form with surprisingly bright acidity. We followed these two with a 1967 Eitelsbacher Karthäuserhofberger Sang Spätlese, which was unfortunately showing oxidation as well. In the 1960s Weingut Karthäuserhof had some remarkable bottlings known for their warmth and generosity, not the terms most often associated with the estate’s wines today, but sadly we couldn’t get a good look at the wine through the oxidation here. (For a period of time up until the mid 1980s, Karthäuserhof had bottled their wines from the iron-rich Karthäuserhofberg according to five former place-names: Burgberg, Kronenberg, Orthsberg, Sang, and Stirn.)

Although there was an occasional off-putting bottle or wines simply past their prime, the tasting revealed some real gems. Stefan Steinmetz’s father, Günther, who joined us for the occasion, made his first wine as a 17-year-old in 1958.  And we were fortunate to taste a bottle from this vintage: a 1958 Brauneberger Mandelgraben naturrein from Willi Steinmetz. (On old labels naturrein means literally “naturally pure,”  and was the pre-1971 Wine Law term for a non-chaptalized wine before today’s Prädikat system, which had created Kabinett to go along with Spätlese, Auslese, and so forth. Willi Steinmetz was the former name of Weingut Günther Steinmetz.). In those early years, until the sterile filter became readily available to more small winegrowers, he produced mostly dry Riesling. In addition to the ’58 Mandelgraben, we were treated to his ’59 Brauneberger Hasenläufer Auslese and a ’60 Brauneberger Juffer naturrein. All three were still exquisite and vibrant. One of my favorites was the 1960 Juffer, which had less than 2 grams per liter residual sugar.  It was an absolutely stunning bottle of Mosel Riesling, especially from a “lesser” vintage.

Among the other highlights was a ’64 Enkircher Batterieberg Auslese from Immich-Batterieberg. As with the 1953 Ellergrub (naturrein), both had been recorked at the domaine, which surely made them taste differently and younger than had they not been recorked. On the other hand, the oldest vintages—1949 and 1938 Batterieberg—still had original corks and were strikingly youthful, an incredible sign of just how long Mosel Riesling can age.

It’s now official. Our friend and colleague Gernot Kollmann, who will continue to be consultant-winemaker at Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel, is the new director and cellarmaster at Weingut Immich-Batterieberg, a well-known domaine in Enkirch famous for its Jugendstil label, stony Batterieberg vineyard, and long-lived wines—in particular, their dry-tasting Riesling. The new owners have upgraded the cellar and possess at the moment 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of top old-vine parcels, many ungrafted, in Enkircher Steffensberg, Zeppwingert, Batterieberg, and Ellergrub.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the former owner, Georg Heinrich Immich, detonated with dynamite a slate cliff to create the monopole Batterieberg (demolition hill). The label depicts a cannon blast with the name of this site, which lies within the larger Zeppwingert. Ellergrub is further upstream on the same stretch of steep, terraced hillside between Enkirch and Starkenburg, known as the “Starkenburger Hang.” These three sites have mainly blue and gray slate with quarzite. The south-facing Steffensberg, with more red slate, is located in a side valley, behind the village of Enkirch. As with most vineyards on the Mosel pre-1971 German Wine Law, the old maps, including the Prussian tax map of 1897, listed more site specific place-names than today and ranked the best sections of Steffensberg, Zeppwingert, and Ellergrub among the first-class sites of the Mosel. (The map didn’t make note of Batterieberg at the time.)

The area around Enkirch and Traben-Trarbach, the latter still displaying its former wealth and Jugendstil architecture as the world’s leading trade center for white wines back in the late nineteenth century, has seen a renaissance of late with the emergence of quality winegrowers such as Martin Müllen, Konstantin Weiser (Weingut Weiser-Künstler), and Daniel Vollenweider. All are members of the Klitzekleine Ring (little bitty circle), a play on the more prestigious Mosel VDP’s Grosser Ring (Great Circle), which is famous for its annual wine auctions in Trier. In fact, the next one is this coming Friday, September 25.

The Klitzekleine Ring is a group of ten winegrowers who get together to do tasting events in order to bring more attention to this part of the Mosel as well as to save precious old vines in forgotten vineyards that would otherwise be grubbed up. Their upcoming “Tafelrunde” tasting is on Saturday, September 26, in Traben-Trarbach.

Autumn is already here, and my last blog post was in June. Please excuse the long absence during the “Summer of Riesling,” I’ve been remiss traveling wine country, hanging out, and drinking Mosel Riesling. By the way, it’s more than just a summer refresher.