A Selection of 2024 Saar Rieslings from Hofgut Falkenstein

The Weber family farms about 13 hectares in Konz Valley. All the Riesling grapes are hand-harvested, gently pressed whole bunch, and their musts are left overnight to settle naturally, before being racked and fermented with ambient yeasts in old 1,000-liter Fuder casks and a couple of 500-liter Halbfuder.

Their vineyards are located on various south-facing slopes, including Niedermenniger Herrenberg—listed as “Zuckerberg” on Franz Josef Clotten’s 1868 Saar und Mosel Weinbau-Karte—and the once highly rated Euchariusberg. The soil is primarily iron-rich gray slate, with some quartz and quartzite-bearing sandstone, along with diabase intrusions in Krettnacher Altenberg. The father-and-son team of Erich and Johannes Weber eschew herbicides and favor low yields—just one short “flat” or non-arched cane (Flachbogen) per vine—to produce an array of dry (trocken), off-dry (feinherb), and fruity Saar Rieslings, which represent mostly cask-by-cask bottlings. Below is a select list of the 2024s:

2024 Niedermenniger Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
Mutter Anna (AP 1): bergamot, bitter lemon, zesty, and stony.

2024 Niedermenniger Sonnenberg Riesling Kabinett trocken
Munny (AP 9): lime zest, mirabelle, peppery—a laser beam.

2024 Krettnacher Auf dem Hölzchen Riesling Kabinett trocken
Auf dem Hölzchen (AP 21): sage, apple peel, vermouth, and tart.

2024 Krettnacher Altenberg Riesling Spätlese trocken
Altenberg (AP 7): brioche, yellow fruit, precise, and steely.

2024 Krettnacher Ober Schäfershaus Riesling Spätlese trocken
Lorenz Manni (AP 18): flinty, apple, quince, earthy, and very fine.

2024 Niedermenniger Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett feinherb
Onkel Peter (AP 4): cassis, creamy, and lemony.
Palm (AP 3): slaty, herby, compact, anise, and long.
Meyer Nepal (AP 11): nutmeg, quince, and spritzy.

2024 Niedermenniger Im Kleinschock Riesling Kabinett
Im Kleinschock (AP 20): floral, umami, and satiny.

2024 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Kabinett
Kugel Peter (AP 12): reductive, brisk, electric, and breezy.

2024 Ockfener Bockstein Riesling Kabinett “Alte Reben”
Mia (AP 22): herbs, forest floor, quince, and silky.

2024 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Kabinett “Alte Reben”
Gisela (AP 8): yeasty, stingy, juicy, and very clear.

2024 Krettnacher Euchariusberg Riesling Spätlese
Klaus (AP 6): elderflower, rosewater, minty, and airy.
Förster (AP 5): lychee, pineapple, and vigorous.

The AP numbers (with the batch number in large bold type) specify the cask, or Fass, which, for the most part, is nicknamed after the former owner of a given parcel. A few casks are labeled with old site names or official place-names, such as Auf dem Hölzchen—which, like Ober Schäfershaus, is in the prime Silberberg site of “Crettnacherberg”—or Im Kleinschock, marked as “Schock” on Clotten’s 1868 “Viticultural Map of the Saar and Mosel.” Depending on the size of the parcel and the yield of the vintage, some casks are from two or more parcels in a given sector, which the Webers harvest—as with all their wines—en bloc, or all at one time. There needs to be enough for one press load. Most wines come from old vines.

The Webers neither chaptalize nor deacidify any of their wines (including trocken and feinherb), and thus indicate all of these as Prädikatsweine (Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese), which, pre-1971 Wine Law, were called Naturweine, or “natural wines.” They also shun cultured yeasts and yeast nutrients. (That’s why so few wines fermented dry in the 2018 vintage.) The Webers never use artificial fertilizers. Instead, they use cow dung. In the cellar, they eschew enzymes, fining agents (such as bentonite and charcoal), cultured yeasts, thiamine (vitamin B1), and diammonium phosphate (DAP). They don’t even have a chamber filter press for filtering the dregs after sedimentation. Instead of hiring a contract bottler, the Webers prefer to bottle their wines themselves, cask by cask, straight off the gross lees with no prior pumping, racking, or filtering. During bottling, they neither use a vacuum pump nor an absolute cartridge membrane filter, and they never inject carbon dioxide, such as Carbofresh, at bottling. Their wines have a natural spritz, which is preserved in the bottle.

When Jean Joseph Tranchot and his team mapped the region between 1803 and 1813, as instructed by Napoleon, Euchariusberg, listed as “Kruschock,” had only about 5 ha of vineyard and was the only area on that hill and neighboring hills to be planted to vines. The Webers have the best part, about 2.3 ha, all in one block, on the prime south-facing slope of Euchariusberg (also known as Großschock), one of the top sites for growing grapes on the Saar. Beginning with the 2021 vintage, the Webers acquired two well-placed parcels, totaling about 0.3 ha, in the original Ockfener Bockstein, which, along with Scharzhofberg, has long been considered to be one of the two or three best sites on the Saar. This gives the Webers yet another top site, to go along with their expanded 0.76-ha block in the place-names Auf dem Hölzchen and Ober Schäfershaus. They now have numerous vineyards that were classified in the highest tax brackets and colored either light or dark red on Clotten’s Saar and Mosel map for the administrative district of Trier. ♦