Weingut Dr. Loosen in Bernkastel is the Middle Mosel's ambassador of the rediscovered German Riesling culture: family-owned for more than 200 years, run by Ernst F. Loosen since 1988, with ungrafted old vines in historic steep slate sites such as the Wehlener Sonnenuhr and the Erdener Treppchen.
- Raw materials
- Riesling grapes from the estate's own steep, south-facing slate sites of the Middle Mosel — blue slate, red slate and volcanic rock — where every owned parcel is still planted with ungrafted vines, many more than a century old; for the dry wines only hand-selected, healthy grapes free of botrytis are used.
- What makes it distinctive
- Winemaking in the Mosel tradition of around 1900: spontaneous fermentation in wooden Fuder casks, twelve or 24 months on the full lees without bâtonnage, and ungrafted vines often older than 100 years — with a 1981 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese kept 27 years in cask as the estate's 'Benjamin Button wine'.
- Production methods
- Estate Production
- Traditional Methods
What they make
- RieslingRiesling from dry to noble-sweet: the estate wines Blauschiefer, Rotschiefer and Grauschiefer, the village wines, the dry Grosses Gewächs and GG Réserve from the classified sites, and the residual-sweet Kabinett, Spätlese and rarer Prädikat wines.
- SektRiesling Sekt brut from the slate soils of the Middle Mosel.
