SHUT UP AND LISTEN

Finding the terror in German terroir

Most avalanches happen on slopes ranging from twenty-five to forty-five degrees. Cars can’t climb a grade steeper than thirty. Thirty-five degrees is a double black diamond, forty is the low end of extreme mountaineering and a fall off a sixty-degree slope, I’m told, means sure and sudden death. Yet here on Germany’s Mosel River, vineyards cant up to a vertiginous sixty-seven degrees. My heart plays the congas as I clamber up through sliding slabs of slate, grasping at trellis stakes too fragile to hold me. No wonder local vineyard workers wear harnesses and climbing gear.

            I’m on a hunt; for 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 cadence of the evening news, while other accents evoke mint juleps on the verandah, or a mall on Long-Gy-Land. Terroir is the accent you can never quite shake.

            Wine reflects its home turf the way your voice reveals the mean streets or the Mississippi. These killer hills, for instance, where high winds dry and concentrate berries; here, roots have to tunnel way down for a drink of water, picking up distinct mineral flavors on the way.

            The fiftieth latitude north isn’t exactly the Riviera. One thing the slopes do is ensure no vine is shaded from the sun. The best vineyards are river-side, where light bounces off the water to warm them. Yet chilly summer nights are crucial – that’s when complex acids and flavors develop, allowing the wine to age with astounding grace.
 
            The Mosel twists like a Slinky, each new bend dramatically altering the growing conditions. Worthless land buts up against priceless vineyards, many of them a crazy quilt of different owners.
           
            Letting wine keep its accent instead of putting it through finishing school is risky business. It means accepting whatever Earth doles out and no whining. In ‘76, for instance, botrytis was so heavy they wore masks in the winery. Terroir happens. But 2005 was a dream: an endless autumn without a drop of rain. When the first juice came off the press, producers went nuts. The wine was rich, ripe and full of the substantial acid they describe here as “crunch.”

            Terroir purists keep piles of rotting pumice—the skins and stems left over from pressing. Under the ashy crust is a hot, heaving mush squirming with glossy earthworms, who are busy converting it to fertilizer. In place of pesticides, vines are festooned with little orange plastic tags that emit female insect hormones.The idea is to confuse the males so much they either quit breeding or turn gay. Girl bugs think they’re in New York City.
 
             Many producers go “sponty;” rejecting store-bought yeast for the natural, spontaneous kind. A few are questioning 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 find out about the winemaker’s favorite pet and first heartbreak. I want to learn things like the fact that water is strictly for washing in these parts. Thirsty? That’s what beer and wine are for. It was good enough for harvest workers in the old days, who stayed nice and healthy chugging barrels of it a day. Sure, a lot of their babies were born with no fingers or toes, but these genetic abnormalities happen.

            To really get terroir, I ramble through town, marveling at street signs—Klosterfahrt! Schafftlicher! I stutter the language, buy scary food in the grocery store and browse real-estate ads taped in a window. Later, back home, I will taste it all in the wine.

            But suppose you don’t go there? Is terroir nothing but your neighbors’ vacation slides—a big zero if you weren’t on the trip? Not necessarily. I mean, when you talk to Vinnie from The Bronx, do you need to know which kid he shook down in junior high and which doctor sewed up his knuckles? Terroir comes through loud and clear if you listen.
             
            Great German wines sing of crushed slate and crisp apples, in the river-clear voice of the Lorelei. Their layers of flavor unfold with Teutonic precision. No other wines on the planet talk quite like that.