I sat with a nearly empty bottle of Vollenweider Trarbacher Burgberg Kabinett 2023, pondering a very specific dilemma. How do you distill the essence of this wine—a perfect reflection of the Mosel, where eons of geology meet 2,000 years of winemaking—into a few thousand words? It feels impossible.

This is the Mosel’s magic. Its wines are at once simple and complex, steely and silky, joyful yet profound. Each sip of this Kabinett—its notes of slate, white peach, and a zing of Lemonheads—was like a story unfolding on my palate. Yet even these descriptions fail to capture the way it refracted into something crystalline and fluid, electrified my palate, and lingered like a slate-y vapor.

Behind this magic are the magicians: the growers who are the stewards of the Mosel, who work the most treacherous and steepest vineyard slopes on Earth with a devotion that borders on the heroic. Their commitment transforms the region’s raw potential into wines so weightless that they appear to defy gravity. The Mosel remains overshadowed by Burgundy’s glamour and the stereotypes that cling to German wine. Sweetness, cryptic labels, umlauts—these are the supposed barriers. But drinking a great Mosel Riesling is to taste something inimitable: a pure expression of place, pleasure, and humanity.

Mosel Wine: Challenges

Nothing about making wine in the Mosel is easy. Matthias Knebel, the owner of Weingut Knebel, says swiftly rising wages are putting significant pressures on winemakers—and this while prices for Mosel wines have been depressed, relative to its historic highs, for decades. He noted that farming his steep vineyards costs $11 per liter, but his wines sell for as little as $11. Meanwhile, local co-ops pay an average of just 70 cents a liter for Mosel wine—and importers pay an average of just $3.26 for a bottle of German wine. 

Given all that, you can see why many growers are eschewing their steep hillside vineyards in the Mosel, or giving them up entirely. These vineyards are difficult to mechanize, backbreaking to work, and require seven times the hours of labor of a flat site. Injuries are commonplace. At least one person falls to their death each year. 

Unsurprisingly, such low-paying, deadly work makes it hard to retain a sufficient workforce. Farmers are shorthanded, cashstrapped, and, given how hard the vineyard work is here, unable to scale up their operations. Top family-run estates, even the likes of the world-renowned Julian Haart and Willi Schaefer, can only work roughly five hectares of steep vineyards while maintaining quality. Few producers are looking to expand. This means that with the exception of the most coveted sites, many vineyards can’t be given away. An estimated 1,000 hectares of Mosel vineyards are expected to be abandoned this year. 

Mosel Wine And Climate

Historically, the Mosel was the northern edge of viable viticulture in Europe. It averaged three catastrophe vintages per decade. (The last was in 1987.) In one of the main bitter ironies that come with a changing climate, global warming has been a boon for German wine and has meant that consistent vintage quality is the new norm.

In other ways, though, the climate wreaks havoc: too much rain or none at all; unmanageable mildew or sunburned berries; warm winters breeding more vineyard pests; short winters resulting in early budbreak, which increases the risk of frost. Smaller yields disproportionately affect the best estates, which sort their grapes more carefully. This, too, is labor intensive. It’s yet another way that, in the Mosel, it keeps costing more money to make less wine, and prices are rising too slowly to make up the shortfall. 

Esca, a Mediterranean vine disease, has proliferated with rising temperatures in this particularly humid environment, and destroyed many ancient Riesling vines. (Julian Haart has gone so far as to plant alternative varieties like Chardonnay as insurance.) 2024 encapsulated almost all of what can go wrong for the Mosel today: a short, warm winter, deadly frost, excessive rain, extreme mildew, and hail. The Saar subregion lost 90 percent of its crop.

All this means that the business of Mosel wines is increasingly untenable, and a sort of regional anxiety is palpable. Livelihoods, centuries of culture and heritage vines are at risk. Max Kilburg, the 16th generation of Weingut Geierslay to grow vines in Wintrich and Piesport, had to beg his father to give him the last of their steep vineyards before he sold or traded them all off for ones situated on flatter land. Kilburg crafts wines which center acidity and terroir expression, as opposed to his father’s de-acidified, easy drinking wines. His were so different that he ended up launching his eponymous brand, much to the chagrin of his father.

On the upside: Phylloxera, the vine pest, struggles to survive here, which gives the Mosel the largest collection of own-rooted ancient vines in Europe. Ulli Stein’s Alfer Hölle vineyard was planted in 1900, and Carl Loewen’s Maximin Klosterlay, the world’s oldest Riesling vineyard, comes from vines planted in 1896. But many others lack champions, and have already been deserted or are at risk of it.

There is some hope on the horizon. Some of the region’s best larger-scaled producers—like Markus Molitor, Van Volxem and Dr. Loosen—buy notable vineyards when they can. Newcomers like Vollenweider, Weiser-Künstler, and Lardot have rescued some incredible obscure Grosse Lage (Grand Cru) centenarian vineyards from the brink of neglect. Bonus points to all of them for converting to organics, which is very rare in these parts. And next-generation winemakers like Max Kilburg and Jonas Dostert are saving family legacies, and producing the best wines their estates have ever known.

Mosel Wine: The Terroir

After temperature, the river is the most important dictator of Mosel’s style. The topography is not only dramatic, but visually telling of the wine it will produce. Every twist and turn of the river etches stone into a vineyard: a mineral-laden rocky outcrop, sunbaked amphitheatres, cool shady terrace, concentrated extra incline, or a gentle slope that bears more supple fruit. 

The Mosel river starts in the Vosges mountains in northeast France, then creates the border for Luxembourg and Germany. It meanders through the limestone hills of the Obermosel, cutting through the ancient Roman town of Trier and across open valleys, with the occasional slope in the distance. This changes suddenly at the village of Quint, where it smashes into a wall of slate, and takes a sudden right. There, the breathtaking vistas of the prominent Mittelmosel begins, along with its collection of iconic vineyards. 

The next 100 miles of river flails wildly, making 18 sharp twists and turns, nearly doubling back on itself, to cover a distance only 60 miles long. Bulbous, hairpin turns are connected by short straight stretches, snaking northeast into Pünderich, the beginning of the Terrassenmosel, which is named for its terraced vineyards perched above the river. At the village Cochem, the river unfurls for another several miles before ending at the Rhine.

The Mosel flows north east, situating many Mittelmosel straightaways as south facing slopes, which are ideal for ripening grapes in cool regions. The longest of these has been cheekily coined “The Hollywood Mile” by Stephen Bitterolf, owner of the noted German-focused importer vom Boden, for its collection of famous vineyards. Among them Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Ürziger Würzgarten, and Bernkasteler Doctor, and the estates of renowned producers like Joh. Jos. Prüm, Dr. Loosen, and Dr. H. Thanisch. 

Unfortunately, some sun-harnessing sites— like the famed amphitheatre vineyard Piesporter Goldtröpfchen—can now be too hot, muddling the finer, discreet notes these vineyards’ wines were once famous for. Today’s best growers focus on retaining acid. Willi Schaefer, Joh. Jos. Prüm, and Julian Haart defy logic with their precise, linear wines, in their popular vineyards—no matter the weather. And lesser known and cooler sites that promote freshness are coming to the fore, like Thörnicher Ritsch (look for Hermann Ludes and Carl Loewen’s wines from its grapes). Another is Wolfer Goldgrube, which is so chilly that, when I once visited in July, I had to pop on a sweater. And Euchariusberg (arguably Falkenstein’s best site) in the Saar should now be a Grand Cru.

The Saar and the Ruwer tributaries to the east and west of Trier flow into the Mosel river. These tiny subregions are lumped into the Mosel region, but look and feel different. The valleys are wider, with vineyards set back from the much smaller rivers and airflow more persistent and the temperatures cooler. Ruwer’s top estates are Karthäuserhof and Maximin Grünhaus and the Saar’s include Egon Müller, Peter Lauer, and Hofgut Falkenstein. These are the very finest, steeliest, most mineral most ethereal wines of them all. 

Vines across the Mosel are often planted into meager topsoil, often nothing more than gravel, stones, and sediment from broken down slate bedrock directly beneath it. Its blue, gray, red and brown hues—interspersed with quartz, clay and touches of limestone)—are often given credit for the distinct mineralic differences in site. (Limestone is only dominant in the Obermosel.) The colors are best explored through the village level wines of Clemens Busch, which has blue, gray, and red bottlings from Marienburg, a single hillside in Pünderich. Generally, gray wines are stony and severe; blue wines are floral, saline and feel fractal; and red runs more lush, with cayenne, cherry, and silk.

Soil skeptics claim rocks have little to do with minerality. Based on the scientific evidence, I might be inclined to agree, but the Mosel produces proof that makes me shut up and taste. In December, I compared Julian Haart’s excellent wines from limestone and slate, and the differences in texture, flavor, approachability were stark. The limestone examples felt complete, elegant, fluid, and lemony. Slate was severe, steely, edgy, stony and needed more time to blossom. When I pointed this out to Haart, he said “slate offers the unvarnished truth, and always tastes harder and straighter and also needs more time to develop. Limestone is more open and more accessible.”

The label for the 2023 Vollenweider Kabinett I mentioned at the beginning of this article doesn’t include the word Riesling. This is a recent change at the estate, to adopt the French practice of letting the place stand on its own was intentional, and to foster the notion that the vineyard would express themselves through any grape. I’m inclined to agree after tasting wines like the Chardonnay from Haart, Pinot Noirs from AJ Adam and Daniel Twardowski and audacious reds from Ulli Stein. 

That said, Riesling’s lucidity, structure, and ageworthiness, makes it the king of white grapes. It can thrive across a wider set of climatic conditions than any other and has stylistic flexibility matched only by Chenin Blanc and Furmint. Its transparency allows each region, no matter where they’re located across the globe, a signature expression, the best of which are legendary. But Riesling’s fluidity in the Mosel, and its articulation of its terroir, stands alone.  

All Riesling has a steel rod of acidity at its core, but the interaction of that acidity with the terroir of the Mosel is unique. Its best result in singularly luminous, featherweight wines—powerful from within without being forceful; wispy without being wimpy. Flavors span the rainbow in a sip of Selbach-Oster Anrecht, or evaporate as they shear the enamel off your teeth with a salt laden, pithy Falkenstein Euchariusberg Gisela.  

Still, many in America continue to assume that all Riesling is sweet. It isn’t. More dry Riesling is produced in Germany than sweet. Off-dry wines still dominate by volume in the Mosel but several top producers specialize in dry wine: Ulli Stein, Clemens Busch, Knebel, Lardot, Falkenstein, Vollenweider, Max Kilburg. The rest focus the vast majority of their wines on slightly off-dry styles, especially Kabinett, a supremely drinkable, low alcohol, delicately balanced wine with a kiss of sugar. 

As Stephen Bitterolf points out in his new book vom Boden, Ten Years of Hocks & Moselles, that “the true soul of German wine is the acidity.” Any sugar retained is a buffer, allowing us the thrill of sipping lightning in a bottle without the pain and pucker of searing acid. I’ll take the lick of sugar and less alcohol any day of the week. (And nothing is better with Indian food than Spätlese.)

Those still fixated on the sugar thing only need to remember two things: Trocken, which means dry; and GG, which stands for Grosses Gewächs, but is almost always labeled with the initials, so you don’t even have to read German. It means wine from a Grand Cru site that is perceptibly dry. 

Mosel: The History (And Those Labels)

The Romans planted the first vineyards in the Mosel 2,000 years ago. By the 13th century casks were exported all over Europe, which was then only afforded to the most bonkers wines. During the Napoleonic era, the Mosel became the first region for which maps notated crops—including vineyards. The French tax office classified each village, and individual parcels were ranked by the reconquering Prussians in 1814. 

Beautifully detailed Prussian tax maps found a second life in the latter half of the 19th century, when wine merchants brought them on sales calls. It’s hard to express now, in a world of Google Maps, how revolutionary this was. Standing at the Ritz in New York, merchants from Germany could point to a shaded spot on a map and say “Look here. The Sonnenuhr vineyard in Wehlen is clearly better situated for producing excellent wines than the Laurentiusberg in Leiwen. That’s why it's more expensive. Buy it while you can!” 

Indeed, until World War II, Mosel Riesling was the most expensive wine on earth, and Goldtröpfchen was more familiar than Meursault. Tragically, most of those merchants were Jewish. Between the Nazis murdering them and declaring war on most of the rest of the world, German wine, understandably, fell out of favor.

Prolonging the decline were decades of uneven vintages, and the Parker-era fetish for power trumping delicacy. Many also cite Germany’s difficult-to-understand and constantly changing labelling schemes, but I’m tempted to call bullshit: if you can learn to parse Burgundy’s labels, you can figure these out too. (Here’s an in-depth primer I wrote for Flatiron Wines a few years ago about them.) 

Other useful things to know: The Mosel’s GG Rieslings are much lighter in body, and lower in alcohol—with a real crystalline elegance—than those from the rest of Germany, or the Alsace’s Grand Cru or Wachau’s Smaragd bottlings). Think more concentrated minerality, rock and salt, some include fresh fruit aromas in their youth, rather than density, oily-richness and savory notes. All other Mosel wines can be assumed to have some sugar, but it almost always takes a back seat to the wines’ driving acidity. Also: Auslese Riesling from the Mosel with steak. Thank me (and noted somm Lauren Hoey, who’s the Wine Director of Manuela) later.  

Vineyards are important in the Mosel, as they are anywhere, but, as in Burgundy, one should shop grower first. I’d rather drink the Saar-appellation level Barrel X from Peter Lauer than a Piesporter Goldtröpfchen from an unknown producer. Or choose anything Ulli Stein makes from his unsung vineyards: Alfer Hölle, St. Aldegunder Himmelreich, Palmberg Terrassen, and Klosterkammer are all more delicious than an overripe Zeltinger Sonnenuhr.

Another good place to start: the back label. All of these importers have curated incredible German portfolios: vom Boden, Skurnik Wines & Spirits, David Bowler Wines, German Wine Collection/Field Blend Selections, and Schatzi Wines. Excellent producers, who aren’t in those portfolios include Egon Müller, Hofgut Falkenstein, Maximin Grünhaus, Martin Müllen, Max Ferd. Richter, Materne & Schmitt, Van Volxem, and Markus Molitor.

Today, when good village Vosne can start at $80, Mosel Grand Cru wines are underappreciated and undervalued. If you haven’t already, there’s no better time to check in on these growers and their wares.