Andrew and I spent a week in the Mosel Valley, a wine region in western Germany famous for its Riesling. The Trockenbeerenauslese (botrytis dried, hand selected, late harvest) wines from this region go for thousands of dollars in auctions. These are some of the “biggest” white wines in the world, but you hardly see them locally. People around here and in the rest of the country for the most part drink the excellent “everyday” white wines, which go for 5-7 euros a bottle.
There are at least 50 wineries in every town so if you want to do a tasting walk in any direction in any of the towns on the Mosel river (or the Saar–both tributaries of the Rhine), ring the bell at the door of the winery, if no one comes you can walk to the next door…or to the next town over the hill. A lot of the wineries own the property at the crest of the hill, so you just walk up there, stop for a little glass of wine and enjoy the panoramic views.
On the weekend, the winery behind our flat had their “try everything we made last year” party. We learned that the German style of wine making is to separate out each picking of the grapes (usually around 3 rounds of picking) and then ferment them in different batches according to sweetness–a very micro-managed way of making wine. At this tasting alone, we ended up trying 12 different qualities and sweetnesses of Riesling.
You’ll notice over all in the photos from our week that the vineyards here are steep, making for intense harvests. The weather here is also very on an off– sunny, cloudy, cold, warm. The ancient limestone and volcanic activity also make for very rocky soils.
Since the spring weather here is so finicky, we took advantage of the nearby thermal springs in Bad Wildstein, a nice little pool to relax in on a cold rainy day.
