Moselle on the Map

GRANDS VINS Of the

GRAND DUCHY

PHOTOS SERGE CHAPUIS (TOP), © DOMAINE ALICE HARTMANN (LEFT)

On the steep terraces of the Mosel river, a collection of dynamic vintners are lovingly putting the luxe in Luxembourg’s wines. Jeffrey T Iverson reports from Grevenmacher on what some consider Europe’s most beguiling vintages

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GRANDS VINS Of the

GRAND DUCHY

PHOTOS SERGE CHAPUIS (TOP), © DOMAINE ALICE HARTMANN (LEFT)

On the steep terraces of the Mosel river, a collection of dynamic vintners are lovingly putting the luxe in Luxembourg’s wines. Jeffrey T Iverson reports from Grevenmacher on what some consider Europe’s most beguiling vintages

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PHOTOS SERGE CHAPUIS (TOP), © DOMAINE ALICE HARTMANN (LEFT)

The vineyards of Moselle, including Alice Hartmann, facing page, are proving ever more fertile grounds for superb wine

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ritish wine critic Stuart Pigott was in the Mosel wine region wrapping up a tasting tour for his 2014 book, Best White Wine on Earth: The Riesling Story, when on a whim he decided to hop the German border to visit a vineyard on the other side of the Mosel river – in Luxembourg. His intuition proved inspired. One wine he tasted there, he later recalled, constituted “the most exciting discovery I made in Europe during my research”: a 2011 riesling from Domaine Alice Hartmann (alicehartmann.lu) in Wormeldange. Super-ripe peach, apricot and mango aromas; on the palate, creamy yet bone dry; a long, silky finish – it was a riesling the like of which Pigott had never experienced.

And yet Luxembourg’s reputation for serious winemaking has generally been as limited as its vineyards (1,300ha, compared to Germany’s 9,000 just in the Mosel, or Moselle, as Luxembourgers call it). A string of difficult-to-disastrous harvests in the early 20th century seemingly convinced wine experts long ago that Luxembourg was too rainy, too far north and too small to presume

it could create anything great. The inexpensive wine many producers pumped out for the local market and trade partner Belgium, grown from high-yielding grapes made quaffable with liberal doses of sugar, didn’t help. But today, a new generation of winemakers, on a roll of superb vintages, has begun to repair the Grand Duchy’s viticultural image. And as they refine an array of titillating styles – sparkling crémants, racy rieslings, ambrosial ice wines – an intriguing new dimension of one of the world’s legendary wine regions is taking shape.

The Mosel’s most celebrated wines are German rieslings, grown downriver on slate soils, and boasting intense, fruity sweetness and bracing acidity. Upriver, though, Domaine Alice Hartmann’s riesling, like that of many Luxembourg producers, grows on limestone – and not just any. The so-called Koeppchen slopes are south-facing and perilously steep, where decades-old vines have sunk their roots deep into the fossil-rich bedrock: it’s a textbook perfect vineyard site, as the wine’s endless finish suggests. “When a terroir is very difficult,” says André Klein, commercial director of

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Domaine Alice Hartmann, “when the vine must struggle to survive, that’s when you can get the most spectacular results.”

That well describes its brut crémant, a riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir assemblage, which has become the preferred bubbly of the Grand Ducal Court. The French wine industry bible, Hachette, named Hartmann’s grand cuvée crémant among its Bouteilles de rêve, a ranking of the best wines in the world.

Clockwise from top right: the cellar at BernardMassard; Domaine Alice Hartmann; the exterior of SchumacherKnepper’s new tasting room; inside the new facility

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“WHEN THE VINE MUST STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE, THAT’S WHEN YOU CAN GET THE MOST SPECTACULAR RESULT S” André Klein of Domaine Alice Hartmann

oenology in both Germany and Bordeaux under Dubourdieu.

“Abi’s as kind as he is competent and passionate,” says his mentor, “and he makes very beautiful rieslings.” With his Château Pauqué (+352 6211 96037) label, Duhr is redefining Moselle wine with each profound cuvée. Ripening elbing and rivaner grapes to hitherto unattempted levels for his richly aromatic Bromlet and Homelt wines, Duhr rehabilitates Luxembourg’s most undervalued varietals, while proving for all to taste how much a string of warmer growing seasons in recent years has improved Luxembourg’s potential for fine winemaking.. Duhr’s flagship Clos du Paradis cuvée is a divine chardonnay redolent of flint smoke and truffle, and a wine one critic wagered to be the greatest 100% auxerrois ever made.

“I always wanted to make wines without any compromises,” says Duhr. “It’s a philosophy I share with many winemakers in places like Bordeaux and Burgundy, who simply want to make the best wine possible with the soil they have.” As that philosophy spreads, soon even The World Atlas of Wine may have to acknowledge that tiny countries can make grand wines after all.

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JULIEN BECKER, © DOMAINE ALICE HARTMANN, SCHUMACHER-KNEPPER, MARTIN BÄUML

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uch success is all the more remarkable considering the latest edition of the venerable World Atlas of Wine doesn’t have a single page on Luxembourg.

“It’s true for a long time Luxembourg was mostly known for simple table wines made with grapes like elbing and rivaner [varietals disdained in Germany],” says Karine Zirnheld, oenologue for Bernard-Massard (bernard-massard.lu), Luxembourg’s main quality sparkling-wine producer. “But there’s been a growing awareness of the real potential our terroirs offer here in Moselle.”

Zirnheld traces the shift back to 1989 when a small group of estates gathered to found the quality wine charter Domaine et Tradition, advocating low yields and proscribing chemical fertilisers and herbicides. From Château de Schengen (chateau-de-schengen. com) with its keuper marl soils and rieslings redolent of flowers and marzipan, to Domaine Clos des Rochers (clos-des-rochers.com) with its chalky soils and brioche- and acacia-perfumed pinot blanc and riesling crémants, “they wanted to show that in Moselle we could create wines of high standing,” says Zirnheld, “genuine reflections of a terroir, which deserve to be known around the world.” It was the beginning of a movement, followed by the rise of dynamic estates like Domaine Henri Ruppert (domaine-ruppert.lu), Domaine Viticole Charles Decker (+352 2360 9510) and Domaine Viticole Schumacher-Knepper (schumacher-knepper.lu), and finally in 2014, a general revision of industry standards.

For Denis Dubourdieu, the renowned scientist who led the revolution raising Bordeaux’s white-wine quality in the 20th century, those efforts are bearing fruit. “I believe an evolution is under way [in Luxembourg],” he says. “The wines are much less sugared and acidic and less sulphured than they once were – and they are ageing far better now.” Fittingly, it’s one of Dubourdieu’s former students who today epitomises the future of Luxembourg wine: Abi Duhr.

Born into a long-established winemaking family, Duhr studied

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