From: Mosel, Germany
Varietal: Weissburgunder
Taste:
Made from Pinot Blanc grown on grey slate soils with some quartz, this delightful, slightly cloudy pet-nat is simultaneously wild and polished. Notes of Asian pear, tart melon, and lemon zest culminate in a wine that is bone-dry, earthy, elegant, and ultimately mineral: like the smell of warm spring rain and nostalgic petrichor smells bouncing off the PNW concrete. This Pet-Nat will make you want to party and have a civilized cocktail party all at once.
Pairing: The Falkensteiner pet-nat would go wonderfully with a wide range of foods, from crisp, fresh salads to smoked trout rillettes smeared on crunchy baguette slices. We’d also love to have it with classic BLT sandwiches or spaghetti carbonara, for something richer. Today, we’re sharing two recipe pairing options; the Whitefish Salad, which we’d want to enjoy on fresh cucumber rounds or endive spears, is the perfect solution for a nice light meal, while the one for Belgian Cheese Croquettes is a great appetizer for the next time you’re hosting some friends.
Whitefish Salad
By Joan Nathan
Authentic Belgian Cheese Croquettes
By Mandy Naglich
About. The Weber family farms about 13 hectares of mainly old Riesling vines in a side valley of the Saar known as Tälchen (“little valley”). In 1985, Erich Weber and his wife, Marita, built up the property of the then-dilapidated Falkensteinerhof (established in 1901) from scratch.
Today, Erich is joined by his middle son, Johannes, to produce some of the most authentic wines in the Saar. The Weber's top vineyard sites are located on various south- facing hillsides of primarily iron-rich gray slate with some quartz, including the highly prized sites of Niedermenniger Herrenberg, Niedermenniger Sonnenberg, Krettnacher Altenberg, and the once-legendary Euchariusberg.
The average age of their vines is 40 to 50 years of age, and the oldest is more than 90 years old with over one hectare of ungrafted vines. The Webers work close to organic with no herbicides and a healthy cover crop and believe in low yields (one flat cane per vine). All the grapes are hand-harvested, and whole Riesling grapes are gently pressed in a pneumatic press for two to three hours. Besides Riesling, the Webers have some parcels of Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder) and Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder), the latter one of the best examples on the Saar and Mosel.
The musts flow via gravity into the cellar below for natural sedimentation overnight before being vinified exclusively with ambient yeasts in 1,000-liter ancient oak Fuder casks and a couple of 500-liter Halbfuder, the traditional fermenting and aging vessels for Mosel wine.
The Webers like to bottle each Fuder separately, which is unheard of today, even though it was the standard in old times. Therefore, they can have two or more casks from the same vineyard site and with the same Prädikat. However, these wines will have different AP numbers because they come from different parcels of the same vineyard site and were fermented, aged, and bottled separately. All of this work results in an array of green-tinted, light-bodied, high-acid, unchaptalized dry (trocken), off-dry (feinherb), and fruity Saar wines, all of which are true cask-by-cask bottlings.
