Weingut Dr. Loosen, Bernkastel

Ernst Loosen took over the family estate in 1988 and inherited an unusual asset: parcels in six first-rate Mittelmosel sites, planted with ungrafted vines that in places are over a century old and had never been ripped out and replanted. His decision was to crop them hard, ferment with ambient yeast, and let the sites rather than the winemaking do the talking, and he has spent the decades since arguing in public for old-vine fruit and against the classification system.

The holdings run through Bernkasteler Lay, Graacher Himmelreich and Domprobst, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Ürziger Würzgarten and Erdener Prälat and Treppchen. Six villages, six distinctly different expressions of slate, and the estate bottles them separately so you can line them up and argue about them.

Loosen is also the reason a great deal of the English-speaking world drinks Mosel Riesling at all. He has spent thirty-five years on the road explaining the Prädikat system to people who found it baffling, and the estate’s basic bottling has been many drinkers’ first Riesling.

The winery sits at St. Johannishof on the road below Bernkastel, named for the spring in the courtyard wall. The slope begins about two metres behind the building.

The comparison to make here is the two soils. Twenty-one euros each, same vintage, same category, same cellar: blue slate at Wehlen against red volcanic slate at Ürzig. They taste as different as the geology promises.