Part 1 // Articles
LUXEMBOURG TALES
Maturing from adolescence into adulthood Unfortunately for the world – and fortunately for its residents – Luxembourg doesn’t appear on the international wine map because almost none of its production is available beyond the borders. Text: Cecilia Rodriguez | Photos: Julien Becker
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Cecilia Rodriguez is a freelance writer living in Luxembourg. Her articles have appeared in, among others, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. She is a regular contributor to Forbes. Cecilia Rodriguez est une journaliste freelance vivant au Luxembourg. Elle a écrit des articles entre autres pour Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post et Los Angeles Times. Elle collabore régulièrement au magazine Forbes.
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t’s safe to say that despite appearances, legends, and 2,000 years of history, Luxembourg’s thriving wine industry is just emerging from adolescence. Like other successful industries – banking and finance, for example – it began, business wise, as a relatively recent market opportunity. The high-quality Rieslings and Pinots, Auxerrois and Chardonnays that inspired the Commission de Promotion des Vins & Crémants de Luxembourg to say this year that “never has wine flowed so freely, never was the hour of glory so sweet to savour…” are, in fact, products of the 20th century. The “Marque nationale”, the designation of origin that distinguishes Luxembourg wines, was created in 1935 for the “oldest” ones, in 1991 for the Crémant de Luxembourg, and as recently as 2007 for many other successful products (vintages from the assemblage of different wines). But unlike banking and finance, imported and mostly managed by foreigners, wine production
is intrinsic to Luxembourg and managed for the most part by Luxembourgers. Winemaking is so embedded in the national culture that you could reasonably think of it as imprinted in its DNA, as central to the country’s identity as the language itself. For that reason, this “new” industry simply cannot be separated from the country’s more distant past. The love story between the Moselle River and the romantic vineyards rolling over the slopes along its banks dates back to ancient times and can be told like a fairy tale: “Long ago, in a land with no clear borders, (possibly as early as the 4th or 5th centuries BC), there lived hard-working peasants who labored the land to produce their food and drink. The weather was inclement and the water wasn’t always clean. So they warmed their days and nights, and avoided infections, with wine they made from wild grapes. Then in the 2nd century AD, the Romans arrived and were happy to find wine in the neighborhood. Luxembourg joined the administrative region
centered on the imperial capital of Trier. The difficulty of transporting wine from more southern regions of the Empire contributed to the creation of vineyards on the steep slopes on the southern side of the Moselle. New varieties of wine appeared and the inhabitants drank happily ever after.” We don’t need to delve into the details of the history of wine over the following centuries: prosperous times during the Holy Roman Empire and with the proliferation of monasteries and religious orders in the Middle Ages and hard times during the many wars of occupation, the French Revolution, the Phylloxera epidemic, two World Wars. Variations in the climate have had a profound effect, as have changes in the geography.
New Forces And so we arrive to today, when Luxembourg wines have become a respected industry – helped in recent decades by institutional and private investment and incentives, regulations to control
the yield per hectare, the introduction of modern vinification technology, and of course, the “terroir”, that elusive and indefinable combination of sun, weather and soil. Luxembourg’s wines have earned international praise and every year sell out the entire production of 17 million cases. The quality has also been pushed ever higher by young vintners who have opened up to the outside world, learning from their peers in the more renowned neighboring countries. Of the total 42 kilometers of AC Moselle Luxembourgeoise, where 1.300 hectares of vines grow along the left bank of the river between Schengen and Wasserbillig, 13 kilometers correspond to the Commune de Riesling which includes some of the most famous vignobles, as well as some of the country’s most picturesque villages. Among them is Ehnen, reputed as one of the prettiest for its historic mixture of baroque and medieval architecture, and where Max and Elizabeth Mannes decided to embark on their own
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