Hermann Ludes "Riesling" Mosel, Germany 2023

FROM VOM BODEN:

THE WINE: The 2023 Mosel, as it is simply referred to on the consumer label, is an off-dry wine (with 20 g/l of residual sugar) made from fruit harvested in the Thörnicher Schiesslay. It offers a subtly reduced nose made of wet stone, melon, greengage, white flowers, and whipped cream. The wine is smooth and round on the palate and leaves a subtly tart and almost fruity-styled feel in the medium-long finish.

THE PRODUCER: Weingut Hermann Ludes has flown under the radar for decades for a number of reasons. First, the village Thörnich is located in an upper-section of the Mosel, far away from the famous “Hollywood Mile” of the Mosel. Further, Thörnich is legendary for shaping wines that are raw and tensile; the wines of Hermann Ludes especially can be brutally structured. In other words these are not easy wines. Second, the founder’s son and Julian’s uncle, also named Hermann Ludes, speaks no English and has made, over the decades, exactly zero attempts to market himself or to try and placate any whims or fashions, customers, exporters, importers or journalists. He has made his wines his way; he has spent a lifetime in his vineyards. That has been enough. These are truly old-school Mosel Rieslings; in my mind these are the rustic, transparent, bracing – even a touch brutal – Mosel wines that were probably common decades ago. Yet this style has been nearly forgotten, pushed aside by the riper, fruitier, easier style of plush-and-giving Mosel wine. To my mind, Hermann Ludes, Ulli Stein and Erich Weber are the current canonical masters of this style.