Mosel Wine  Lars Carlberg
Light, Zappy, and Dry

With certain foods and drinks, it seems there’s nothing so elusive as their essential nature. They became famous long ago, and since then all sorts of powerful technology has appeared, which influences our perceptions even if it isn’t used to make a particular item. And consumer taste may evolve, pushing makers toward, for instance, a moister, creamier cheese. Wine lovers are still trying to understand the nature of many wines (even as the climate is warming and changing them).

Lars Carlberg has relentlessly researched the great Riesling wines of the Mosel Valley. Everyone who knows them agrees they can be more than one thing and anywhere from dry to sweet. The distinctly sweet can be very rewarding and are in a class apart — but what’s typical for the Mosel? Nature and location may suggest one thing, but fashion and goals have changed over time. Some of the best-informed advocates of the Mosel have argued that the classic, the quintessential style, is somewhat sweet; others have defended the dry.

Unlike comparisons to velvet or strawberries, “typical” doesn’t have an evocative ring as an adjective for wine, but in meaning it’s important. Looking past deliciousness, it describes wines whose taste is characteristic of wherever they come from, down to a particular vineyard.

Carlberg became interested in Mosel wines in the early 1990s, and for more than 20 years (not quite consecutively) he has lived in the Mosel city of Trier. He knows the wines and a number of important growers, dealers, importers, and critics; he was once part of an importing business. He

launched his all-Mosel website (larscarlberg.com) in 2012, and not long ago he became an apprentice winegrower at Hofgut Falkenstein, part of an intensive two-year program of study.

Of all the writers I’ve worked with, he is the most tenacious, the most obsessed with detail, the most intensely committed to going back one more time and looking again. He reads old accounts, examines historic maps and other evidence, knows past and present techniques, considers rules and economics, and talks with thoughtful growers and chefs. All his accumulated knowledge has led him to a strong conviction that classic Mosel, the one that made the wine’s reputation, is dry. Not that he’s anti sweet, just that he’s pro dry. Leading this issue is his major article on Mosel, the most deeply understood that has yet been written. Carlberg celebrates Mosel. The dry-tasting wines not only provide pleasure on their own, they fit the current resurgence of fresh, flavorful, moderate-alcohol wines that are extremely good at the table.

Cover: Johannes Weber of Hofgut Falkenstein. Photo by Nelson Fitch.