6/28/2006

By Jennifer Rosen

Denver Rocky Mountain News

Most avalanches happen on slopes ranging from 25 degrees to 45 degrees. Cars can't climb a 30-degree grade. Yet here on Germany's Mosel River, vineyards cant at a vertiginous 67 degrees.  Heart pumping overtime, thighs on fire, I clamber up through sliding slabs of slate, grasping at trellis stakes too fragile to hold me. It's clear why local workers wear harnesses and climbing gear.

I'm hunting that crucial element in great German wine: terroir. No one quite agrees on the definition, but think of it this way: Some people speak in the bland syllables and perfect cadence of the evening news; other accents evoke mint juleps on the veranda, or a mall on Long Gy-land. Terroir is like the accent and attitude that reveal your roots.

Just as we are shaped by mean streets or the Mississippi, wine reflects its home turf - these killer hills, for instance, where high winds dry and concentrate berries. Vine roots have to tunnel far, far down for a drink of water, picking up distinct mineral flavors on the way.
The acute slopes assure sun exposure to every vine, which is important at 50 degrees north latitude, not exactly the cradle of ripeness. The best vineyards are riverside, where sunshine bounces off the water to warm vines and ripen grapes. Yet the chilly summer nights are crucial for building complex acids and flavors that age with astounding grace.  Serpentine turns of the river cause dramatic differences in neighboring parcels. Worthless land butts up against priceless vineyards, many divided into a crazy quilt of different owners.

Letting wine keep its accent instead of putting it through finishing school is risky business. You must accept whatever Earth doles out. In '76, botrytis was so heavy you had to wear a mask.  But 2005 was a dream vintage: an endless harvest without rain. When the first juice came off the press, producers went nuts - rich, ripe wine, full of the substantial acid they describe here as "crunch." Yet '05 brought little eiswein; most of the late-hanging grapes got eaten by wild boars. Terroir happens.  Terroir purists avoid chemicals.

Instead, they keep purple-black piles of rotting pumice, the skins and stems left over from pressing. Under its crust, the hot, heaving mush squirms with glossy earthworms, busy converting it into fertilizer.  Vines are festooned with little plastic tags emitting female insect hormones. This confuses males, who either turn gay or at least quit breeding.

Some winemakers are going "sponty," rejecting store-bought yeast for the spontaneous, natural kind. Others are concerned about the traditional practice of picking out the ripest grapes in a series of passes over weeks. A truer, if less ripe, expression of the vineyard would be to harvest the whole thing at once.

But vineyards are only part of terroir. I seek the total gestalt. I need to know the winemaker's favorite pet and first heartbreak, and that here, water is strictly for washing; you quench your thirst with beer and wine. Harvest workers in the old days stayed good and healthy chugging barrels of it a day.

Great German wines can evoke crushed slate and crystal streams filled with Rhine maidens. Layers of flavor unfold with Teutonic precision. No other wines on the planet talk quite like that.