Hofgut Falkenstein

In 1979, Erich Weber acquired a section of the west-facing Euchariusberg vineyard. His neighbors at the time preferred farming flatter sites in the valley, so it was comparably easy to obtain pieces of the steep slopes inaccessible to machine harvesters. We toured the vineyards by minivan. Sounds lazy I know: the Herrenberg site is particularly close to the cellar! But rain looked inevitable and Erich, Johannes and Lars Carlberg, their Texan colleague, had put in a full day’s vineyard labor before I arrived at the Falkensteiner Hof mid-afternoon. And it did rain. We drank light, lemony Kabinett trocken and chatted, while sheltering under the van’s rear door.

Erich said that when he was young, 1,200 sunshine hours per year were normal in these fields. Today they get 2,000 hours. Higher, cooler sites are ideal. “Our wine reflects pure minerality,” he said. “It is the typical sign of our wines.” Erich believes they will grow 10-30% in vineyard acreage in the next 5 years. “We have to work in our typical way. It is not for making money. It is our life. As long as I live, it will not change.” But the estate must grow a little, to keep up with demand for their pure, traditional wines, and to give Johannes and Lars a secure future. Over wild boar sausage rolls prepared by Erich’s wife Marita we talked about American politics, Erich’s memories of childhood in this quiet valley, and the simple approach that makes the wines of Hofgut Falkenstein so singular and memorable.

The cellar is half tucked into the hillside. It’s small and cool. A row of small old casks along two opposite walls. The oldest ones have candleholders on top of them. No temperature control. Fermentation starts spontaneously. Each cask only holds the yield from one parcel. Bottling is by hand, straight from the cask. Erich appreciates the straightforwardness of the traditional approach and has decided to stick with it.

Right outside the cellar is a beautiful little patio paved with natural stone and surrounded with flowers and small trees. Johannes has brought out several bottles and Erich puts a big cutting board with sausage, cheese and bread on the table. Wait, have I been here before?
It doesn’t take long for what started as a “work situation” to turn into a social gathering. Yes, I’m taking notes; the precision of the Spätlese Feinherb; the fact that the Spätburgunder doesn’t go into malolactic fermentation because of acidity….
But most of all, I’m enjoying the hell out of the company. These people are smart, kind and funny and make fantastic wines!

“The Weber family farms about 9 hectares of mainly old Riesling vines (over 1 hectare ungrafted!) in a side valley of the Saar. All the Riesling grapes are hand-harvested and the whole grapes are gently pressed for two to three hours. The musts are left overnight to settle naturally and are vinified with ambient yeasts in 1,000-liter oak Fuder casks. Their top vineyard sites are located on various south-facing slopes, including the once highly prized wines from Euchariusberg. The soil is primarily gray slate, with some quartz and quartzite- bearing sandstone. The father-and-son team of Erich and Johannes Weber don’t use herbicides and believe in low yields—one Flachbogen, or “flat cane,” per vine—to produce an array of dry (trocken), off-dry (feinherb), and fruity Saar wines—most of which are cask-by- cask bottlings.

The Webers neither chaptalize nor de-acidify any of their wines (including trocken and feinherb), and thus indicate this as a Prädikatswein (Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese), which, pre- 1971 Wine Law, was called a Naturwein, or “natural wine.” They also eschew yeast nutrients and cultures. That’s why so few wines fermented dry in the 2018 vintage because of the long, hot summer. In addition, the Webers avoid artificial fertilizers and over-tilling the soil, two measures that can cause too much vigor and rot. In the cellar, they eschew enzymes, fining agents (such as charcoal), cultured yeasts, and diammonium phosphate (DAP), a yeast nutrient, which also helps fermentation.

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 hectares of vineyard and was the only area on the hill and neighboring hills to be planted to vines in the early 1800s. The Webers now hold slightly over 2.8 hectares, all in one block, on this prime south-facing slope of Euchariusberg, also known as Großschock, long considered one of the best sites for growing grapes on the Saar. In other words, their contiguous holdings are located in the heart of Euchariusberg. (The core parts of Niedermenniger Herrenberg and Krettnacher Altenberg also had vineyards depicted on the Tranchot map.)” — Hofgut Falkenstein