Mosel (wine Region) - History

History

It is believed that viticulture was brought to this area by the Romans who planted vineyards along the Mosel and the Rhine in order to have a local source of wine for their garrisons. The cost of transporting wine up from the Italian Peninsula or across the Vosges Mountains and the Roman vineyards in Gaul was very high and impractical. The Romans considered creating a canal between the Saône and the Rhine before ultimately deciding to plant vines in the area. Trier (founded 16 BC) was a major Roman outpost and it is likely that the first Mosel vineyards were planted in the surrounding hillsides sometime in the 2nd century. Viticulture was certainly flourishing in the area by the 4th century when the Roman poet Ausonius wrote a poem about the beauty of the land at harvest time.

The Mosel wine of the Roman period was described as light bodied and "austere". It was said to be an easier drinking wine than that of other Roman areas. In the winter time, the wine was heated in a kettle and drunk like a tea (a practice that still has some tradition among modern vineyard workers who drink it like coffee often with a little sugar added). In warmer vintages the wine was noticeably more fruity and sweet. This was because the warmth allowed the grapes to more fully ripen and develop more sugars. During the cold autumn the fermentation process would not fully complete because of the low temperature thus leaving the wine with high levels of residual sugars.

In the Middle Ages, villages sprung up that were centered around the region's wine industry. These "wine villages" were known as "Winzerdorfs" included paths from the town center up to the area's vineyards. At the center was a community wine cellar where all the area's growers could store their wines. One of the most well known Winzerdorf was the village of Bernkastel which was granted town rights in 1291. In 1435 when Count John VI of Katzenelnbogen planted Riesling in the nearby Rüsselsheim the first time he owned vineyards in Winningen like the Destil, in Burgen and Kochem one half of the city and many vineyards more along the Mosel. In order to create more suitable land for vineyards, vineyard owners in the 16th century used explosives to break up the vertical spurs of rock along the rivers.

Towards the end of the 17th century, the Mosel began to identify more with wine made from the Riesling grape. The St. Maximin's Abbey in Trier owned 74 vineyards and by 1695 had over 100,000 vines to the Riesling vine. Today the vineyard of Maximin Grünhaus is considered one of the best Riesling vineyards in all of Germany. In the 18th century, the Prince-elector of Trier, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, mandated that over a seven-year period every vine in the Mosel area was to Riesling only. The rise of the House of Hanover in Great Britain saw a period of increase exportation of "moselle wine" to England. However, the wine's high price kept the wines mostly in the hands of the Royal court and English nobility rather than replacing claret in the village taverns.

The 19th century saw an unprecedented era of prosperity for the Mosel wine industry under the rule of Prussia starting with the historic vintage of 1819. For the rest of the 1820s, there was a succession of outstanding weather and sterling wines produced. To promote the region's wine, the Prussian government lowered the tariffs for the import of Mosel wines to other regions of the Prussian kingdom. The development of the Zollverein customs union even further benefited the Mosel by reducing the customs on their wines traveling to other regions of the German Confederation. A string of bad weather vintages in the late 1830s and early 1840s would damper the extent of prosperity that the Mosel would see.

By the 1850s, wine-makers in the Mosel had discovered the benefits of chaptalization in helping to compensate for bad weather vintages and under ripened grapes. Another significant boom came a couple decades later when the British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone lowered the duties on light wine which opened up the British market to lower cost Mosel wines. This increased prosperity had the net effect of encouraging more quantity in production rather than quality. Many areas that were not ideal for Riesling were soon planted by the easier to grow Müller-Thurgau and other Riesling crossings. In the 20th century, a North American taste for sweet wines saw the prominence of Liebfraumilch and brands like Blue Nun dominate the German import wine market. In recent times, the Mosel (as well as the entire German wine industry) has dedicated itself to reversing the reputation it gained during these years and focus on the quality of the area's dry wines.