Monthly Archives: September 2009

While the Ürziger Würzgarten vineyard was probably my favorite, I wanted to share two more with you.

The winemaker from Emrich Schönleber walking us through the Goldtröpfchen vineyard

Whenever we were let out into the vineyards, we were like kids at recess.  Here’s a short video of my fellow wine nerds traipsing through the Goldtröpfchen vineyard.  I was hoping to hit the America’s Funniest Home Video jackpot, but no dice.

This was the next stop:

Still in the Mosel, on to the Erdener Treppchen vineyard

you can see me making my way up the stairs at the bottom left - helps give some scale to the shot

I made a quick video of this vineyard because I was impressed by the “soil” (aka big slabs of slate).  I did turn the camera at one point, but it still worth checking out.

This week we visited with Prinz Salm. Here’s a quick video showing the estate:

The estate has been around since 1200, but the average age of the current team in charge is 25! We tasted and toured with Felix, who’s 27 and the current wine maker (he started 2 years ago). He’s the 32nd generation, but the first one to focus only on wine making – historically, the family has also been involved in politics, construction and finance.

Felix told us a story about when his grandparents were living near Cologne prior to WWII. When his grandmother received word the Americans were coming, she acted quickly to preserve the family’s wine cellar. She took all the bottles from the cellar, tied rocks to them and tossed them into the nearby lake. The wines were protected and the family did get them back, but there was one serious shortcoming to her idea – the day after she sunk the bottles, all of their labels floated to the surface of the lake.

After we toured the estate, Felix took us to some of his family’s vineyards. Here’s a video where’s discussing one of his current projects, replanting Riesling vines.

(This video has useful information, but it appears as though it was shot by a child.  I didn’t realize you can’t get a “portrait” shot in video mode – only “landscape”.  I’ll get the hang of it)

I hope the sound works in this video. I’m traveling with a computer that doesn’t like to play audio, so I’m hoping for the best.

This medieval, 500 year-old cave that lies below the market in Westhofen has belonged to Weingut K.F. Groebe since 1763. All of Fritz’s wines are treated in oak – no stainless steel (if the sound is working in the video you’ll learn the barrels are 20-100 years old, so they don’t impart flavor – it’s more about texture and tradition).

I asked if the cellar required any maintenance and the answer was “not really”. It maintains a year-round temperature of right around 14 degrees Celsius and just the humidity level that the wines seem to like. From time to time, they may have to clean a little fungus from the outside of the barrels just to make sure it doesn’t end up in the wine.

Turns out this fungus (the black stuff you can see on the ceiling if you’re paying attention) is “good fungus” and survives on humidity and alcohol alone – doesn’t sound like such a bad existence.