Personalities

Egon Muller: I want to test myself
"Vinnaya Karta" №6 (65) July 2005, "Vasha Vinnaya Karta" №6 July 2005

Scharzhofberg is one of the greatest vineyards in Germany and in the world.

A family run Egon Muller-Scharzhof owns its best part and produces legendary wines. Yet Egon Muller IV doesn’t rest on the laurels. He recently started two unusual projects — in Slovakia and in Australia. Why does he do it? The winemaker told us in an exclusive interview.

- You are fluent in several languages. It is unusual for a winemaker.

- Besides German, I speak English, Japanese, French. You have to learn French in the wine. I learnt my French when I was doing apprenticeship in Bordeaux. Same thing with Japanese. I did an apprenticeship in Japan in 1985. Then I had more time. Before going to Japan I took lessons, then I spent half a year in the country.

- How did you start your winemaking career?

- I have inherited the winery from my father. It is a family business that counts 6 generations and over 200 years of history. I was very easy to decide to become a winemaker. We are three brothers, but our winery is not big enough to be run by three families. My father decided very early that he would not divide it. I am the oldest one, so I had the first choice.

- You don’t have the same system like in France where you are obliged to divide the estate equally among inheritors, do you?

- We did have it for a long time. Just after the French revolution the part of Germany where I live became French. Until Second World War Napoleonic rules were the basis for our legislation. Only after the war it was changed.

- At present you have two prominent vineyards.

- The main vineyards are Scharzhofberg and Wiltinger Braune Kupp. Scharhofberg, our most valuable possession, is right behind our house. It is certainly one of the greatest vineyards in Germany. We have 8.5 hectares there. Wiltinger Braune Kupp lies two-three kilometers away, but the situation is slightly different. It is right on the Saar River and the soil composition is slightly different, so the wines are also different. We also have a few other vineyards, but the wines are never sold with the name of the vineyard on the label. We use grapes to make our Scharzhof Riesling.

- Is that your generic wine?

- Not really, because it’s all made from estate-grown grapes. It’s our bottom line wine.

- You also have vineyards outside Germany.

- Yes. We have a vineyard in Slovakia. It comes through my wife’s family. It’s not something I was looking for, it came to me. When I first went to look at the vineyards, I went for the family’s sake. I didn’t think anything good could come out of there. I was quite surprised. I met a very capable, dedicated winemaker. He happens to live in the property right next to the plot we want to develop. If I didn’t have somebody I could rely on totally, I would not have come down. The whole way of thinking there is different. If you look at traditional vineyards, you really see that the whole stretch of vineyards goes uninterrupted for 30-40 kilometres. Vines are in very bad shape. The only vineyards which I looked at and liked were the ones that this guy had. I knew that I had to go for them or not do anything at all.

- How do you assess the potential of these vineyards for Riesling?

- There is great potential for it. Vineyards are on the plains and it is very interesting. I think Chateau Bela has a very good quality. When we start planting our own vineyards, we will be able to increase it further. Existing vineyards still have a lot of the old Communist influence. The way of planting, the clones, everything is still the result of 40-50 years of mass production. With new vineyard there will be new investment to buy new machinery, because we want to have small spacing between rows. We need the right plants, new winery. It could be too much for our winemaker. We need to build it together.

- Back in Germany, will you continue to expand?

- I am going to get another hectare of vineyards soon. In Germany it’s not easy to develop because very much is left to chance. You cannot just go to somebody and say ’I want to buy your vineyard’. When my father started to make wine after the Second world war, he had 8.5 hectares. Over the years we have come to 15.5 hectares which is almost twice that my father had. But it was not something that we went out to look after. Sometimes somebody is willing to sell, but the choice is very small. You have to be very careful with what you buy. Some little vineyards came to me. I did some kind of vineyard exchange with another producer. That’s how it works. It’s by small steps.
But what we are going to do is we are going to make wine in Australia. It just happened. The first harvest of Riesling was at the beginning of April in Adelaide Hills. We are going to make a dry Riesling that is more in a European style, than in Australian.

- Quite a surprise. What circumstances brought you to Australia?

- Again it has come to me. It was not something that I tried to do. We are three partners: an Australian wine merchant, a winery owner in Italy (Armenian by nationality) and me. We have the same importer in Sweden. We once started talking and after two years will be launching a wine.

- It is a curios story.

- It is very interesting. I have not done it much for commercial reasons, but because it can be a great experience for me. It’s the best way to test my way of thinking. Australians have completely different way of winemaking from us. Sometimes you can get too short of your region. I want to test myself and this is a good way to do it. It’s not very expensive business-wise because we buy grapes, not vineyards. Winemakers in Australia are highly trained and reliable, so a lot of work can be done by e-mail.

- This brings us to the question of terroir.

- Exactly. This is what we are going to find out. There is so much mystique about terroir. Certainly, some vineyards are better than others. But everybody will agree that you cannot just do a scientific analysis of climate, soils, etc. What are the factors for great terroirs? Is it only environment or people, too?

- Your father firmly believed that wine comes from the vineyard for a hundred percent.

- Yes, the quality of wine. I do believe that, too, but I need to check myself. It’s so easy to become stuck in certain way of thinking and you need to question it.

- How many wines will there be?

- Just one. Maybe when it’s commercially successful, we will do several. The project is set up as a joint venture. The time line is 5 years. If it’s successful, we will build a winery. For the time being, it is a five year project.

- What is it called?

- Kanta. It is a Sanskrit name. The idea is that Sanskrit is a common denominator for three different partners. "Kanta" means "beloved one".

- Let’s go back to your estate in Germany. What are the unique points of your main vineyards?

- The common denominator is slate soil which is very important in our area. There are 9,000 ha of vineyards in Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. I think that probably 98% of serious vineyards are slate soil. There are many different types of slate and many different stages of decomposition. Scharzhofberg has a very soft black slate. There are not a lot of big stones left, the structure is very small pieces and the roots get a lot of minerals from the soils. On the other hand, Wiltinger Braune Kupp has more iron content which makes the soil red in colour. It’s stony, the decomposed soil is fatter. So we tend to have richer wines with a slightly earthy character. On top of that we have climatic difference. It warmer and more even down by the river at Wiltinger Braune Kupp. It is slightly cooler and there are big fluctuations between daytime and nighttime temperatures at Scharzhofberg. The problem for Scharzhofberg often is to ripen grapes in less good vintages. But when they are ripe they have superlative elegance — that’s why they are so famous.

- Do you work only with Riesling?

-Yes. After the Second world war my father tried to find grape varieties that could be grown next to the Riesling to give more even bottling for the lesser vintages. But there has never been anything that was really successful.
You could say that Riesling is good when cultivated in system. If the system is maintained correctly, then everything will be fine. But if you change something, the whole thing won’t stand. For example, there is a very peculiar trellising system that is called Mosel trellis. One stake for every vine, and 2 branches are tied like a heart, and it is really very labour intensive. But you can have 10 thousand vines per hectare. And you can actually have relatively high yields without compromising on quality. When vineyards become old, the yield per vine goes down, but there are still many vines left, so that will be ok. Somr people decide to take every other row out to give more space to use tractor which is much easier. But it doesn’t work. You don’t have enough foliage for photosynthesis. You need added vines. So if you change the system, it has repercussions and many things that you don’t see at the first moment.

- You have some very old vines. How are they?

- We still have vines over 100 years old. They are actually planted with the Mosel system — one by one, 10 000 vines per hectare. It’s quite labour intensive. You have to do everything by hand. When I started with my father, they were 80 years old, now they are 100 years old. In these 20 years the yields have gone down, but they still produce very good wine.

- What were the most memorable vintages for you?

- I have not seen any really catastrophic vintages like 1972. I was too small then to really understand my father’s long face. So probably the most memorable one will be 2003. It was so completely different from anything. It was outstanding. I could say that for us it was a very good vintage, but I cannot say it for all of Germany. In many places it was too hot and too dry. And there was not enough acid in grapes to put the wines in balance. Actually it was for the first time in Germany that it was legal to add acid to the wines. Fortunately, we didn’t have to do it. So you will probably find a lot of unbalanced wines. But the best wines are great.

- When you make wines, you do not stick to official German classification by sugar levels.

- Before the 1971 wine law the term ’Kabinett’ didn’t exist in Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. Basic wines were called "naturel". In April the wines were clarified and were ready for tasting. Cellarmaster would put all the wines on the table and evaluate them. The 1971 law did not give enough reflection to the palate of winemakers. For my father it was clear that this could not be the solution so he had always followed his old way of making the wines. Ripe grapes were for Kabinett, overripe for Spatlese and botrytis grapes for Auslese. Nowadays we seem to have warmer weather and we seem to get riper grapes. It becomes much easier to follow this kind of classification and not so much look at the legal points.

- Oh yes. It probably started in America. The problem is that it is very popular in inexpensive bracket, but the exchange rate doesn’t help. Now the fashion seems to have taken hold of England, too. I’ve recently been in London. Sommeliers talk a lot about Riesling and offer it by glass in trendy restaurants.