I april i fjor skrev jeg en artikkel om nettsiden moselfinewines.com og deres meget interessante vinrapporter. Jean Fisch og David Rayer driver denne nettsiden, og de kan definitivt regnes som noen av de beste ekspertene innen tysk vin. I dag svarer de meg på noen spørsmål om ulike temaer: vinifikasjonsteknikker, klimaoppvarming, prisutviklingen, økologisk satsingen, de beste årgangene, osv.
Vinverden.no / Frederic Le Moullec: There’s not much information about yourselves on your website. Could you say some words about Jean Fisch and David Rayer?
Jean Fisch / David Rayer: You are right, we do not talk much about us as we prefer our work to do the talking. There is nothing really spectacular in our (rather similar) meanderings into the world of wine. We both became passionate wine lovers in our twenties but, unlike others, pursued professional careers outside of the wine business (Jean works in consulting and David in aviation). While neither of us is a German national, we both are completely fluent (to mother tongue status) in German and live respectively in Brussels (Belgium) and Strasbourg (France), i.e. very close to the Mosel and Germany.
How was your interest for wines from Germany, and especially wines from Mosel, born?
We met in the mid-2000s during a tasting at Weingut Joh. Jos. Prüm: So how can we write about anything else than the Mosel? Joke aside, we both love fresh, elegant, and refined wines, and were naturally drawn to German Riesling, and Mosel Riesling in particular. There are few wines which move us as much as a nicely matured Mosel Kabinett, Spätlese, or Auslese. Also, the finest dry German Riesling can make a shiver go down our spine. Our love for mature Riesling is one of the reasons why, right from the start, we dedicated a full Issue to this topic every year. It is such a great thrill and we want to entice more people to enjoy this!
Your reports are extremely thorough with wine critics and information about producers, climate, statistics, history, etc. What’s your working methods, and, not the least, how are you able to offer this detailed publication free of charge?
Thanks for the kind words! The thorough bit is part of our DNA: Right from the start, we decided to “do it properly or don’t bother,” and to produce the type of publication we would want to read ourselves: Factual information to help understand the region, its Estates, the vintages, and tasting notes which describe the style of each wine. This requires depth of knowledge and hence focus in our case, as we would be doing this journal on our “free hours.”
We taste the wines for part at the Estates but also, for a sizeable part now also at our homes due to logistics and time constraints. We complement this with 50-80 interviews with growers each year, during which we hear their take on the vintage, get the news, etc. This has become increasingly easy with social media so that we are almost in a daily contact with many growers.
The free bit was also a decision we took consciously right from the start. Do we want to make this a venture (and spend 20-30% of our time on admin stuff), or do we want to focus on wine? We focused on spending a maximum of our time on the wines. Clearly, our decision was made easier because none of us requires the funds for a living. We do however rely fully on a subscription-based model in order to work as closely as possible to that of most wine critiques (as we are convinced that our value added is the content, not the “free” bit of the subscription).
Your main focus at the beginning was wines from Mosel, but you are now covering more and more from other regions. Why is that?
Our choice to focus our work on a limited set of topics was essentially time bound, as we explained. At the beginning, we focused on Mosel, the annual Auctions, and mature Riesling. In the course of the last decade, Germany as a whole has made huge strides in quality regarding its dry Riesling and we had a growing request from our readers to share our views on that topic as well. After careful consideration and preparation, we extended our coverage to these wines as well in 2015, when we were satisfied that we had the logistical capability to cover this topic with our self-set standards of quality.
Is it possible for you to say something about how the climate change affects German wines? Is it an advantage or a problem (more/less rain? More/less disease? Earlier ripeness? Etc.). Do producers have to focus on others clones or other grapes varieties?
Climate change has been playing a huge role since many years now and we wrote a piece on its impact in the Mosel already back in the Mosel Fine Wine Issue No 28 (June 2015), of which an extract is available online: http://www.moselfinewines.com/winemaking-in-the-age-of-climate-change.php.
Germany is often portrayed as a winner of climate change, and for good reasons: Without climate change, we would probably not have seen the dramatic improvements in quality of German wines, especially in Mosel’s dry Riesling but also German red wines. But this is only part of the story. Climate change affects the delicate symbiotic balance between a grape variety and its region EVERYWHERE. Riesling in central Germany is as much affected as is Chardonnay in Burgundy. For Riesling, the primary impact is that grapes ripen faster and are more prone to rot, which leads to its share of challenges and counter-measures by growers (as we explain in the article mentioned above).
Do producers vinify the same way today as they did 20 years ago? Can you notice a different style in the winemaking?
There has been quite some changes to winemaking over the last few years, but much of these changes had to do with the grape selections, especially for dry Riesling. However, there have also been more subtle changes in the cellar. Growers have reduced their reliance on additives (be them in the form of cultured yeasts, enzymes, use of sulfur, etc.), something which is helped by the quality of the grapes coming in. Many are returning to traditional wooden casks and look at keeping their wines in cask for longer. Some experiment with newer oak. The most interesting development has been the explosion of natural wine growers lately, as we explain in the latest Issue. While still representing only a tiny part of the production, it will be interesting to follow their development and the impact on the region as a whole over the coming years.
Is organic winemaking more and more popular? How difficult is it to work a vineyard in an organic way?
Germany is one of the pioneering countries in all things organic (first green party voted into a parliament, etc.) and harbors many organic pioneering wine growers. However, it is only recently that many top growers have become organic. Mosel lags a bit behind but, truth must be told, it is of course easier to be organic in central Chile, where hardly any rain ever falls, than in the Gulf-stream impacted and drenched Mosel.
This is however about to change, as we explained in our article on “natural wine” published in our latest Issue: Many quality growers are increasingly embracing organic means.
What do you think about the price evolution?
Prices for German wines have increased significantly over the last decade as quality improved and wine lovers started to find back their love for these wines. But the price of fine wine has gone up throughout the world, often far quicker than for German wines. Except for a few wines, German wine is still comparatively cheap and represents some of the finest values in the world of wine! Besides being wine journalists, we are also wine lovers and understand fully well that the argument “still being comparatively cheap” will fall on death ears when one remembers the days when a “renowned” wine costed €15 and not the €80 it commands today … even if it is still only a fraction of the price of a Burgundy of similar quality. Besides, German wine is still in full development, there are many new growers coming on the market, which produce stunning wines and which don’t cost an arm and a leg!
How can you describe the 2019-vintage in Germany in general and Mosel more specific?
Our DNA is to talk about what we know: We have not tasted much 2019 Riesling outside of the Mosel so we have zero to add at this stage. However, we did have a sniff at a few casks at leading Estates in the Mosel: 2019 could turn out to be an epic vintage at the top, as we explain in our 2019 sneak preview piece published in the latest Issue (yes, this is an advertisement to subscribe J).
Which are your favorite vintages?
Our favorite vintages depend very much on the type of wine. If we talk dry German Riesling, we clearly favor the cooler vintages such as 2014, 2013, 2010, or 2008. For dry Mosel Riesling, pure and mildly acidic vintages such as 2018, 2016, or 2012 have our favor. For fruity-styled wines (Kabinett, Spätlese), age is truly critical in our eyes: Our favorites to enjoy now are those from the 1990s, 1993 and 1997 in particular. Yes, we know, we are talking about 20-25 year-old wines. But here is one of the beauty of the Mosel: Such wines can still be found at some Estates. For instance, last year we recommended no less than 30 different wines (which were still available) from this decade in our Issues!
Do you have any book recommendations about Mosel- and German wines?
There are now quite a few general “overview” books which will help trigger the interest of wine lovers in German wines: Besides the classic “World Atlas of Wines” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson (of which an 8th edition has been released recently), there is the recently published “Wines of Germany” by Anne Krebiehl MW, the book “Great Estates of Germany” by Stephan Reinhardt, and “Best White Wine on Earth” by Stuart Piggott (who covers Germany in the wider context of Riesling worldwide).
In addition, we can warmly recommend anyone with an interest in the historic context to lay their hands on a copy of the book “Wines of Germany” by Frank Schoonmaker, of which various editions were published from the 1950s until the 1970s. It is still the biggest love declaration to German wine ever written.
However, wine lovers will be hard-pressed to find deep reference books about specific German regions (let alone about Germany as a whole), i.e. with analyses of vineyards (map, soil, etc.) and deep profiles of Estates (including their history, ownership, and winemaking approaches), such as they exist for instance for Burgundy, Bordeaux, or Piemonte. For those mastering the German language, we can recommend the book “Könige des Riesling” by Peter Sauerwald and Edgar Wenzel. Despite being from 1978, it is still the reference book on the history of some of the greatest Mosel Estates.
Is Scandinavia an important market for German wines?
Scandinavia is a hugely important market for German wine. We don’t speak often with growers about markets (it is not our focus), but Scandinavia pops up as soon as the topic is on the table. Clearly, your cuisine naturally matches Riesling well. But we feel that your love of German wine runs deeper than that. Even the Nobel Prize organizers kept German wine on the menu of their annual banquets after World War I and II, despite all things German being anything but the rage. Talking closer to home, we see this interest in the readership of our publication as well: We estimate that 10-15% of our readers are Scandinavian.