Issue 3: Lorraine to the Mosel

A rewarding new northern frontier in the natural wine world.

Here at last is Issue 3 of the Not Drinking Poison newsletter ! Just in time for Easter, and France’s third COVID lockdown.

Issue 3 derives from an escapade during France’s second lockdown, which began on Halloween. Before lockdown was announced, I’d arranged a week of visits in Lorraine and the Mosel, on the occasion of a natural wine tasting that was subsequently cancelled due to COVID gathering restrictions. Not to be deterred, I went ahead and departed France for Germany on the evening of the second lockdown, armed, of course, with a negative PCR test. (Germany menaces travellers with 25’000€ fine and jail time for non-compliance with COVID regulations.)

Why, you might ask, was I willing to risk life and livelihood to visit these two regions at the northern frontier of natural winemaking?

Lorraine, and specifically its Côtes de Toul appellation, is an emergent source of intriguing cool-climate natural still and sparkling wines from gamay, pinot noir, and auxerrois. A handful of vignerons there are shaking off the region’s lowly history as a vassal zone of Champagne, discovering a new regional identity in natural winemaking.

Germany’s Mosel region, two and a half hours’ drive further north, possesses a unique heritage of pre-phylloxera riesling vines on precipitous slate slopes. What’s more, they can be rented for a song, due to a general lack of young people willing to farm them. The new natural winemaking scene here is all the more revolutionary for rejecting the region’s entrenched conventional wine styles, which owe their existence to sterile filtration and heavy sulfitage.

Together, Lorraine and the Mosel comprise an exciting and rewarding new frontier within the natural wine world.

Train tickets from Paris to Nancy or Metz can be had for under 20€. From there it’s a relatively short drive to experience the contents of Issue 3:

• A feature interview with Mosel BIODYNAMIC AND NATURAL WINE pioneer RUDOLF TROSSEN.

• A profile of Reil biodynamic winzer THORSTEN MELSHEIMER, whose UNDER-THE-RADAR NATURAL WINES benefit from his NEAR-MONOPOLE of steep old riesling at Mullay-Hofberg.

• A profile of Kröv organic winzer JAN MATTHIAS KLEIN and his Warholian Factory of POST-TERROIR MOSEL WINE at Staffelter Hof.

• A stroll through the PERILOUSLY STEEP RIESLING vineyards of Sankt Aldegund with Finnish-Dutch natural vinification virtuoso PHILIP LARDOT.

• A tantalizing tasting of unsulfited pre-phylloxera riesling with the OUTRAGEOUSLY TALENTED Traben-Trarbach winzer JAKOB TENNSTEDT.

• A dinner with ALTERNATIVE MOSEL natural wine micro-négoçiant JAS SWAN, whose work spans Lorraine, the Mosel, Nahe, and beyond.

• An introduction to the UPSTART NATURAL VIGNERONS of the COTES DE TOUL: Moselle-born STEPHANE CYRAN, Lunéville native JAN TAILLER, and Bordeaux-trained oenologist WILFRIED CROCHET.

• An article on veteran Nancy caviste ALEXANDRE MERCIER and his terrific bistrot and wine shop L’ECHANSON.

• The third installment of my series on the BEAUNE VITICULTURAL SCHOOL, concerning the courses in WINE ACCOUNTING & RURAL LAND LAW. (No paywall on this one.)

Many thanks for reading, as always! Raise a glass of natural riesling to freely crossing borders again someday soon. Prost!

Aaron