©David Mauplie
Weingut Carl Loewen/ Leiwen, Mosel top quality at insider tip prices. That's how you could describe the small family winery from the town of Leiwen on the Mosel. Today it is in the hands of son Christopher, who has successfully led the winery to the top ranks with his interpretations of Riesling since 2015. The winery was founded in 1803 with the acquisition of the first vineyards in the "Maximin Klosterlay" site and today covers around 15 hectares of the best and steepest sites in this section of the Mosel, some of which are planted with ancient vines.
©Durst
A particular point of pride is the 1.4-hectare south-facing "Maximin Herrenberg" planted in 1896. The Loewen family was lucky on two counts: on the one hand, they were able to take over this vineyard from the Carl Schmidt Wagner winery in 2008 and, on the other hand, this vineyard was never cleared. This means that the vines are ungrafted, ancient and deeply rooted in the soil. This location is one of the oldest Riesling vineyards in the world and is the basis for the top wines from the Carl Loewen winery. The vines here grow on a very rare soil formation, on red slate, which gives the wine a unique aromatic structure of yellow fruits and cassis notes. This site is classified as Großes Gewächs.
©Durst
Near-natural viticulture is practiced here, in the cellar attempts are also made to make do with minimal intervention. Fermentation is slow and spontaneous with natural yeasts, maturation follows in Fuder barrels. The goal is to get little wine from many grapes - that's why small-berry and low-yield Riesling clones are preferred. For 50 years, the winery has been trying to reduce the yield through targeted cloning of the best vines and to give the Riesling its natural variety of aromas in a different way. They have approximately 500 vines, the grapes for the Riesling Varidor come from these vines, which were cloned and planted in cooperation with the Staatlichen Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Trier (State Teaching and Research Institute in Trier), that have the same yield level of the grape variety at the beginning of the 20th century.