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click here to return to 2001
wines
Finally, a good vintage! Not without problems though. This seems
to have been the one corner of Germany which had significant botrytis
with which to contend (see Weingart too), and the resulting selectivity
made for a small crop even by 2001 standards.
Perhaps we got lulled into complacency with the string of fine vintages
starting in 1988. For awhile it looked like I’d found a motherlode
of reliably superb Mosel wine, and then it didn’t want to rain any
more, and then it rained too much. Nature needs to be much kinder
to these people, because they care and you can’t conceive of how
hard they work in these austere terraces.
Konrad Hähn and his estate have garnered a following over here.
I don’t really need to tell the “how-I-ended-up-in-this-east-b.f.-place”
story any more, now that y’all know they make good wine this far
downriver. But viticulture along the lower Mosel has challenges
of its own, and it’s worth at least a cursory glance at this sub-district.
The first challenge is the sheer ridiculous steepness of most of
these sites. They put the perp in perpendicular! Plus they’re on
centuries-old terraces and can never be flurbereinigt. The local
expedient has been to build the monorack, which is basically a little
set of wagons run by a diesel engine mounted to a rack, which coughs
and sputters its way up the vertiginous slopes. You ride facing
down (i.e. backwards as you ascend) so you can buttress your feet
against the back of the cart. When the rack traverses a wall the
angle is nearly vertical and your heart is in your shoes. You wonder
(when you’re not gawking at the views) why did our forbears decide
to grow grapes in such forbidding conditions when it would seem
to have been equally plausible to plant vines on the valley floor.
Probably because they didn’t have TV.
These are the furthest downstream of all Mosel vineyards. Any further
and you’re in the suburbs of Koblenz. It may be the heat-island
effect from the nearby city that makes these the warmest vineyards
on the Mosel. The average must-weights are higher here, and regional
coops pay a premium for these grapes. Or it may be that only the
best sites are tilled anymore, and most of the vines are ungrafted.
It’s worth the journey just to see the terraces. The wines f rom
these sites taste inimitably like great Mosel wines, with an extra
expression of minerality that recalls licorice or lemon-grass. There’s
a vein of red clay running through the Uhlen vineyard, giving those
wines a redcurranty, earthy richness. The Weisenberg site produces
the ballerinas.
Konrad Hähn is a serious, thoughtful man. He seems to take little
for granted, doesn’t do things merely because that’s how Things
Are Done. His fruit is cleaned and gently pressed, then fermented
with cultured yeasts and vitamin B, in order to keep sulfur levels
down later on. Fermentation is as slow as possible: “High temperatures
destroy aroma molecules,” say Konrad. Also, “if you have too much
carbonate evaporation you take aroma out of the wine. We never bottle
with sorbic acid. First you don’t need to do it if your vivification
is clean; second, we feel that despite all advertising you do taste
it.” Konrad’s also evolving away from his early aversion to wines
with stopped fermentations. With the ultra-ripe 2001s, he was willing
to leave unfermented sugar in the wines because it would have taken
too much dosage to give them the sweetness they needed. The wines
seem to be snappy enough to appease him! He’s still 100% stainless
steel.
I liked the vintage. I even liked the Slatestone this year, and
am glad of its success even though I chose not to be involved.
click here to return to 2001
wines
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