Products tagged with 'gws2025'

The Obermosel: no story is told, untile someone tells it

The Upper Mosel has nothing to do with Riesling and nothing to do with slate. Instead, we find limestone. The Upper Mosel in fact represents the beginning (or the end?) of the Paris Basin, the geological reality that informs places like Chablis and Sancerre. Instead of Riesling, in the Upper Mosel we find a winemaking culture based on one of Europe’s oldest grapes: Elbling. It’s important to understand that Elbling here feels like something of a religion. It’s a culture, a regional dialect that is spoken through this wine of rigorous purity, of joyous simplicity, of toothsome acidity. The joy of Elbling is the uncompromising vigor and energy, the raucous and super-chalky acidity. Matthias Hild, who farms about six hectares in the sleepy town of Wincheringen, told me that back in the 1980s, when he’d have an Elbling clock in at less than 8.5 grams acid, he’d taste it and question if it was Elbling at all. Which is sort of like saying you’re not sure the music is loud enough because your ears aren’t bleeding.

Vines for the Sekt are from within 4km of Wincheringen.  After harvest the Sekt goes through a 21-day cold fermentation in stainless steel.  After malolactic fermentation the wine is stored on it’s lees for 9-18 months until disgorgment.  Dosage is 10-12g/L.

-Importer notes (Vom Boden)

he Kupp is name of the main vineyard that Florian Lauer farms. It is also the name of one of the three Grand Cru dry wines that Florian Lauer produces – the other two are Feils and Schonfels. Note in German these are called “Grosses Gewächs,” translating to “great growth.” You should be able to find on the labels the letters “GG,” denoting the fact they are “Grand Cru” and dry.

In a way, the Kupp GG is the final selection of the cherry parcels of the Kupp hill. As with Burgundy, most often Grand Cru, the best grapes, come from the mid-section of the hill – see the map in the gallery. The red-colored parcels are where Lauer sources the grapes: the middle section above Unterstenberg and below Stirn, as well as selected parcels both east and west.

The Kupp GG is normally the most “complete” of all the GGs; it is a wine that shows both fruit and depth (like Feils) as well as a dense mineral core of slate and salt (like Schonfels). It is perhaps the most elegant of the wines, with fine layers and a suave, polished finesse. Kupp tends to have more structure than Feils, so it normally needs a few years in the bottle to begin to show. It also benefits from a serious decant.

-Importer notes (Vom Boden)