Matthias Knebel in his cellar in the village of Winningen. Photograph by Tobias Hannemann.

At Weingut Reinhard & Beate Knebel the main harvest is winding down. The average must weights this past week were around 95° Oechsle. For example, their old-vine parcel in Sternberg, a former site within today’s Winninger Brückstück, had 104° Oechsle.

As an aside, according to Joachim Krieger’s Terrassenkultur an der Untermosel, the highly-esteemed and original Brückstück vineyard became part of Röttgen in 1912. In turn, the authorities re-named the neighboring “Im Geisen” with the name Brückstück. As if this were not confusing enough, in 1971, the newly-designated Brückstück (i.e., “Im Geisen”) also became part of Röttgen. So, today’s Brückstück is mainly the well-situated Sternberg, a reputable, old-named section of a steep hillside with terraces that adjoins the enlarged Röttgen’s. In other words, the authorites expanded Röttgen to the south, towards the village of Winningen, and this comprises both the original Brückstück and Im Geisen vineyards.

Getting back to the harvest, Matthias Knebel, who has taken over more of the winemaking at the domaine, had this to say about the vintage:

In order to clarify one thing first: we’re very pleased with the harvest. Even if yields are described everywhere as being very low, we should nevertheless be happy about the quality of the grapes. It was reported that rot was prevalent in many areas, and one has to say that there was no bad rot—neither sour rot nor acetification. The grapes possessed from the outset of the harvest marked aromatics. The musts all tasted remarkably fruity, and those from the partly drier parcels have herbal aromas. All in all, it looks like fruitier and, again, somewhat robuster wines than 2008. We’ll have to wait and see. We’ve done our job, now the [wild] yeasts are doing theirs!

In Joachim Krieger’s detailed book titled Terrassenkultur an der Untermosel, he writes in depth about the Lower Mosel and later describes and classifies the predominantly terraced-vineyard sites from the city of Koblenz upstream to the village of Hatzenport. One of the many topics he delves into are the complex soil types to be found along this stretch of the terraced Lower Mosel and the myth that has been perpetuated over the years by geologists, geographers, winegrowers, and wine writers alike (often by copying from one another) that the soil here consists mainly of a gray, earthy rock called graywacke (Grauwacke). Not only is this an oversimplification of the diverse soils found on the Lower Mosel, but it is also false, for no graywacke exists on either the Mittelrhein  or Mosel-Saar.

Krieger writes that the use of the term graywacke as a broad generalization of the region’s geology failed to take into account that graywacke has minerals called feldspar, which are not present in the stones of the Lower Mosel much less the Saar, for example. In regard to the latter, wine consultant/cellar-master Gernot Kollmann, who worked at Van Volxem, explained to me that certain sites on the Saar such as Kanzemer Altenberg and Wiltinger Braunfels (in particular, the top site of Volz) consist of hard gray slate and sandstone that have no feldspar, hence no graywacke; whereas, other sites such as Scharzhofberg have a deep-draining weathered slate.

The complex soils found on the Lower Mosel include quartzite, quartzite-sandstone, silty sandstone, sandy and silty slate, as well as slate with quartzite. Krieger also describes the Middle Mosel, Ruwer, and Saar as relatively more uniform with its influential rock formation coming from the clayey Hunsrück slate.

For an introduction to the Mosel and, more importantly, a better understanding of the Lower Mosel, Krieger’s book gives great insight, and avoids name-dropping and ranking producers.