Wine of the Month, February 2011

2009 BREVA Riesling „Edition No.4“

BREVA e.V.

€ 13,80

Why is this wine of the month so expensive ? But wait a moment, isn’t the right question why is it so cheap ? What do the best dry white wines from Burgundy cost ? There 138 Euros isn’t enough to buy a single bottle of many of the Grand Cru Montrachets and one of them (from DRC) costs almost ten times that ! The reason is not that these wines are enormously expensive to produce, rather that they have a great reputation which results in an enormous demand, and the quantities are very limited. BREVA „Edition No. 4“ is a dry Riesling from one of the top sites of the Terrassenmosel, the Valwiger Herrenberg. Here growing a top quality wine is far more expensive than on the gentle slopes in Burgundy and the yield is also very limited. The problem is that this site is nowhere near as famous as the Grand Cru Montrachet.

Changing this situation is the goal of the BREVA association and to this end the members have both created a 2 mile long hiking path through the dramatic, rocky landscape of the Valwiger Herrenberg and produced a joint venture wine each year since 2006. The 2009 is the best so far, a richly-textural, but elegant dry Riesling with a complex bouquet of white peach and blossoms. The price aims to cover the considerable costs of manual cultivation, since none of the work in this site can be mechanized in the way it can be in flat vineyards (thereby drastically reducing production costs). If in the future nobody is willing to pay the price of this manual cultivation, then this great vineyard site will surely die. By the way, the Grand Cru Montrachet is nothing very special to look at, whilst the great amphitheatre of the Valwiger Herrenberg is drop-dead-beautiful.