PART 1: THE MOSEL VALLEY
The Mosel contains the greatest number of superstar winemakers and extraordinary vineyards sites, not just in Germany, but maybe anywhere in the world. The snaking procession of vineyards are perched along the Mosel river, 142 miles long, which twists back upon itself so many times, it fits into a 80-mile long stretch of land.
This is where Riesling reaches its apogee. Here, a spectral rainbow of flavors and divergent structural expectations combine to produce wines of wonder. Every style of white wine is made, from the most filigreed dry, to unctuously sweet, from skin contact to bubbles, and everything in between, sometimes all from the same vineyard in the same year and by the same producer. With this one terroir-transparent grape for a lens, we are left with a dizzying matrix of factors affecting the finished wine in every bottle.
One might expect with such quality wines available, coupled with prohibitively-expensive hand-worked vineyards, that the wines would fetch astronomical prices. Instead, with few expectations, there are deals to be found in nearly every cellar.
How was the 2024 vintage?
Delicate and subtle, the wines of 2024 are getting compared to cool, classic, old-school-Germany vintages, but always with the note that this vintage is also something entirely its own.
We're lucky to have any 2024s at all. In late April, frost ravaged much of the Mosel and Nahe, most of the Saar and Ruwer, and many other areas in both Germany and Austria. After such a devastating frost event, growers' heart rates don't settle down for the rest of the season. The threat of hail, an early end to the season, and the many other regular challenges of farming in this part of the world loom even larger when you are behind in the count. And the challenges weren't over: a cool and, in some areas, rainy season chipped away at already diminished crop loads.
But this is why we drink wine from the margins, wine that you have to be a little crazy to devote your life to making. It brings out a level of skill rarely seen in this business. It's the thrill-seeking side of wine.
Consider this: Where yields were slashed by frost and rain at flowering, the cooler season meant the vine could ripen the reduced crop easily while retaining balance and acidity (as opposed to a hot season, which might have overripened a light crop). Where mildew threatened, the top growers worked tirelessly to thin leaves and sort fruit to ensure only the cleanest grapes were saved. Warm days and cool nights for most of the summer hearkened back to the old days before all we talked about was climate change.
In the fall, rains came again scattered throughout both Austria and Germany, and growers found dry windows to harvest—just as they've done all their lives. A long, drawn-out harvest season meant plenty of time to make good decisions, and in the end, we have fine-boned, acid-driven wines that we believe will age just like 2008, 2013, and other vintages to which growers are comparing this one.
In short, it's exactly the kind of vintage we love drinking, and our only regret is that there are so few wines it may be tempting to avoid cellaring them quite as long as they'll be able to go.
Flatiron Favorites
Working through a list of a hundreds of wines from Germany and Austria can be a lift. We've picked some of our favorite wines for the uninitiated, those with specific tastes, wines for cellaring and because we just love them. The list is not exhaustive, there are just too many things we want to drink to include them all.
We're here to help
Have a question about this wine or any other in this year's DI?
