Many people remark that visiting with Alfred and Rolf Merkelbach at their home in Ürzig is like travelling into the past; not much has changed here in 50 years, including the brother’s approach to winemaking. Well into their seventies, Alfred and Rolf still tend the vines and make the wines with little help: heading into the steep Würzgarten and Treppchen to tie the posts, harvest, and then even racking off the large fuders they use for fermentation and blending. The vineyard holdings of this tiny, 1.9 hectare estate are divided between the Ürziger Würzgarten, Erdener Treppchen, and Kinheimer Rosengarten. Wine cultivation is ancient on these sites, lying just off the Mosel between Ürzig and Erden is the excavation of a Roman press house. When most of the Ürziger Würzgarten vineyards were replanted during the re-alignment of the vineyards (called “Flurbereinigung”), Merkelbach’s vines remained on original rootstock, with an average vine age of 45 years. The Merkelbachs are firm believers in tradition, and while changes in climate and style preferences have pushed up must weights and produced profoundly riper wines, the brothers craft wines of a style more typical to an era long forgotten. Kabinetten are still refreshing, Spätlesen taste like Spätlesen, and oechsle levels rarely exceed the Pradikät range
Riesling is a light-skinned, aromatic grape of German origin which is – if the majority of top wine critics are to be believed – the world's finest white-wine grape variety. For many, the claim above may seem at odds with the sea of chaptalized, low-quality wine exported from Germany in the late 20th Century. In truth, very little of that infamous wine was Riesling at all (Riesling became a scapegoat for higher-yielding grapes such as Muller-Thurgau and Silvaner), but the reputation has nonetheless stuck. No less unshakeable a stereotype is of Riesling as just a sweet grape, used only to make sticky wines.
Direct from the Schwaab-Kiebel wine cellars in Urzig, on the river Mosel, this rare, old but still deliciously vibrant wine shows just how brilliantly Riesling can age: clean, bright, with vivid orange/lemon fruit aromas, amazing youth and verve, so alive with racy lemon/lime zip, cool Erdener Treppchen stature and svelteness, still looking so good and tasting so fine!