Not enough has been written about the Ruwer as a region distinct from the Mosel and the Saar. It’s very small. I guess it gets overlooked?
At only around 200 hectares, this should be the smallest wine region in Germany. But it isn’t, because it’s carelessly attached to the Mosel and Saar under the larger administrative “Mosel.” As stated, I think this is bullshit. I shall treat the Ruwer as its open appellation, as it should be.
The Ruwer is just downstream from Trier. In some ways, the Ruwer is a curious, storybook forest suburb of Trier. A quaint forest-suburb that happens to have two of Germany’s oldest and most storied estates: Karthäuserhof and Maximin Grünhaus-von Schubert. While there are other estates here, for all intents and purposes these are the two defining estates of the Ruwer.
Like I said, it’s a tiny place.
If the Mosel is all about drama, with precipitous inclines lining the grandiose Mosel River, the Ruwer is completely different. First, I’ve been there at least 100 times and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the Ruwer River. Or maybe I have? That’s the point, though: I have no idea. Either way, the Ruwer is not a moderating influence here. As with the Saar, this valley can shape Rieslings with a very sharp acidity.
The valley of the Ruwer is quiet. In fact, stillness feels to me like a defining characteristic — there is none of the bustling tourism of the Mosel. The Ruwer somehow feels wild and remote, even though it is neither. This place is as much a home to horses and wild boars as it is to vines and vineyards. With so many pine forests, the Ruwer has a unique, shadow-dotted quality to it.
This is always a fool’s errand, but the wines of the Ruwer do have their own signature, I think.
They are perhaps a bit fuller than the wines of the Saar, maybe a touch softer, though they share much of their neighbor’s austerity and rigor. Maybe it’s a bit romantic, but while they have the stone and citrus common to Riesling, Ruwer wines seem to be about the forest — I often taste flashes of green resin and pine needle. They are famously age-worthy, and both Karthäuserhof and von Schubert have made compelling dry and off-dry wines for decades. Von Schubert has also famously planted a top parcel of the Abtsberg with Pinot Noir, so maybe that’s a story to follow: the red Ruwer. Let’s see.