Weingut Carl Loewen’s story began in 1803 when the family acquired its first vineyard, setting the stage for generations of winemaking in the heart of Germany's Mosel Valley. Today, their oldest vineyard, Maximin Herrenberg, planted in 1896, still produces Riesling on its original rootstock. It is likely the longest-producing Riesling vineyard in the world. The wine receives many accolades, including from British wine critic Stuart Pigott, who described it as “in a class of its own” and “one of the best dry white wines of the world.”
Although Carl Loewen has gained global recognition, the winery remains a small, three-person operation. Christopher Loewen, the eighth generation to lead the winery, works alongside his father and just one other full-time worker. Their approach lets nature take the lead, with minimal intervention on the steep, hand-tended slopes planted mostly with Riesling. In the cellar, fermentations happen without additives, temperature control, or technological intervention—just wild yeast and time. The wines’ distinctive character reflects the careful tending of the vines and their grapes.
Christopher Loewen stopped by Grape Collective to share his thoughts on working with old vineyards, the challenges of low-intervention winemaking, and the lessons learned from generations before him.
Lisa Denning: Thanks for joining us today, Christopher. Can you tell us about the history of your estate? It dates back to 1803, correct?
Christopher Loewen: Yes. So, it was a very important time for Mosel Valley in the Middle Ages. Most of the vineyards in the Mosel were founded by monks, and monks created most of the very top vineyards. And now Po. The conqueror came around 1800 to our area and needed more money to go further east with the war. So, the goal was to go to Moscow. And so what he did to gain money was he took the prime vineyards of the abbey and the monks and sold them to private people in a big auction in 1803 in Paris. And that was when an ancestor of mine, who was the last vineyard manager in the abbey where our vineyard in Detzem is, went to that auction and bought the prime parcel out of that old abbey. And since then, our family has made wine.
(Christopher Loewen)
Wow. What generation are you?
I have to think about it. I think it's generation eight.
Was there a time when you considered doing something else, or did you always think you'd be a winemaker?
My father would laugh at that question because I have an older brother named Sebastian Carl. Traditionally, in a winery like ours, the firstborn son would take over the estate. But funny enough, it was always clear that my brother had no interest in the winery. From a young age, I followed my father around in the cellar. As a kid, I was fascinated by tractors and farming. Even when I played in the sand, I’d make little rows, seed them with grass, and call them my vineyards. I’d pretend to cut, harvest, and farm them. So, for me, in a funny way, it was always clear I wanted to be a winemaker.
But after finishing school, I asked myself if this was truly the path I wanted to take. I did some internships, and stepping outside the Mosel Valley gave me a new perspective. Growing up there, wine was everywhere—it felt normal, just part of life. But when I worked in the U.S. and New Zealand, I saw how the world viewed the Mosel. Winemakers would tell me their goal was to make a Riesling like those from my home, the Mosel. That was a defining moment for me. Realizing that the place I came from was a benchmark for others made me appreciate it even more and confirmed that winemaking was meant to do.
But after school, I asked myself again if this was the way that I would follow. I did some internships, and it was also very interesting to see that coming from the Mosel Valley, you think it's normal that everything is running around wine. But being in the US and New Zealand, it was interesting to see how people look at the Mosel Valley, directly connecting it with Riesling and winemaking and also, talking to winemakers that say, my ideal is to make a Riesling like those from the Mosel Valley. And that was for me, very special as a young person to hear people say they have the goal one day to make wine like the area that I come from.
What is it about the Mosel that makes it such a great place to grow wine grapes?
I think it’s a combination of things. So, on the one hand, we are quite northern for a winemaking area, so Mosel Valley is quite cold, so we have quite a mild winter. You sometimes get frost in Mosel Valley, but not every year, which is good for the vines. And in the summer it gets warm but not too hot. So perfect conditions for growing the Riesling grape, a grape that loves the long time between flowering and picking.
On top of that, we have a unique terroir with the slate soil that we have here. And it's a terroir that is very good in drainage. So you need a variety that doesn’t need a lot of water even though we have a lot of rainfall in the area. And so you need grape varieties that go really deep into the soil to find the nutrients. But that also brings the advantage that the wines are always very mineral-driven. Also, the long vegetation in Mosel Valley brings a very fruity character to the wines. And that's what I really like: the combination of low-alcohol wine with a lot of complexity and length.
Can you tell us about the evolution of your winery and how it operates today?
Our estate dates back to 1803 when the first vineyard was purchased during the Napoleonic era. At that time, it was a mixed farm with both farmland and vineyards. My father took over the estate in the mid-1980s, a particularly challenging time for winemaking. However, this period of crisis provided an unexpected opportunity for a smaller, less established family like ours. Unlike the larger wine families that dominated the Mosel Valley in its prime around 1900, we were able to use the challenges of the 1980s to our advantage by purchasing prime vineyards at more accessible prices.
From the beginning, my father had a clear vision: to focus on crafting exceptional wines. He sold all the farmland to acquire steep, hand-worked vineyards and quickly prioritized old vines. This led us to purchase key sites such as Lorenzhöfer, with vines over 100 years old, and Maximin, planted in 1896. Today, what sets our estate apart is these very old, ungrafted vines. They yield tiny quantities, but the wines they produce are remarkably complex—this remains a defining feature of our winery.
Today, we continue to operate as a small, family-run estate, which is important to me personally. I studied viticulture and enology because I wanted to focus on the craft, not become a business owner managing a large enterprise. Our team is intentionally small—just one employee, my father, and myself. We also don't do a lot of marketing, and I haven't been to the United States for six years. We're really just very focused on the production. Happily, we are in a situation where wine lovers around the world keep on buying the wines, allowing us to work as a small family estate.
Can you tell us specifically about your vineyards and terroir?
Our winery is located in the Mosel Valley, in western Germany, near the borders of France and Luxembourg. The Mosel is a river that flows into the Rhine. There are two main cities in the Mosel Valley: Trier and Bernkastel. Our winery is situated right in the middle of these two cities, and we farm vineyards from Leiwen upstream to Trier.
This region is known as the Middle Mosel, both geographically and historically, as it’s the most famous area of the Mosel Valley. However, we’re also at the intersection of the Middle and Upper Mosel, where the slightly higher elevation brings added freshness to the wines.
Our vineyards begin in Leiwen with the Laurentiuslay vineyard, which features ungrafted vines over 100 years old. This vineyard is the cornerstone of our town’s winemaking heritage. Moving further upstream, we farm in the village of Köwerich, where the terroir is especially unique. Here, on top of the slate soil, there are high quartz deposits that give the wines pronounced minerality and saltiness. This site also contains Europe’s second-steepest vineyard, where the rocky terrain makes it nearly impossible to stand. You can taste that extreme minerality in the wines—it’s refreshing yet complex.
(Ungrafted vines in the Laurentiuslay vineyard)
Further upstream, in the village of Detzem, we have the Maximiner Herrenberg vineyard. This site has been part of our winery since it was purchased in 1803. The vineyard is planted with 70-year-old vines and produces wines with a more fruit-forward character each year.
One of the biggest milestones for us came in 2008 when my father purchased a former estate 20 kilometers upstream: the historic Köverner Laurentiushof. This was one of the region’s premier estates 100 years ago, though it had fallen into decline. We were fortunate to acquire the entire property, which included 1.5 hectares of ungrafted vines over 100 years old. This site also features red slate with a high iron content, which adds a unique character to the wines. The red slate brings a distinctive flavor profile, making it a perfect complement to our estate’s existing vineyards.
Can you tell me about the grapes that you grow?
Our primary focus is Riesling, which, in my opinion, best expresses the terroir. It shows the climate and soil at the highest level, making it one of the great white wine varieties in the world. It has incredible versatility, excelling in both dry and sweet styles, and it’s always refreshing.
Since the early 1990s, we’ve also planted some Pinot Blanc, or Weißburgunder, as we call it in Germany. The Pinot Blanc is planted across different vineyard sites, each offering its own unique characteristics. It's where we have a higher portion of loam, a little bit of softer slate, and it's a variety that is, for me, as a winemaker, very interesting because we handle it a little bit differently in the cellar, unlike Riesling which we don't influence at all.
With Riesling, we just pick the grapes, press them, let them fall by gravity into the cellar, let them do natural fermentation without any additions, and also without any modern techniques or no cooling or heating technology, we just let them ferment. It's just juice doing its thing, a very traditional or low-interventional mindset that works really well in our area.
(Riesling grapes)
The Pinot Blanc is a variety where we basically also do that low interventional style, but on top we do a little bit of maturation time for the grapes. So we crush them a bit and let the picked grapes stay for six to 12 hours on the skin so that the aromatics of the skin go into the juice. Then, it ferments in younger oak barrels, up to 5 years old, which brings a little bit of influence of the oak, as well as big barrels, the 1000-liter barrels, that are traditional for the Mosel area. So no barriques or anything like that. And after natural fermentation, which we always do also with Pinot Blanc, we stir. So we do a little bit of bâtonnage after fermentation so that it gets a bit creamier. So just two very, very small interventions with maceration time and bâtonnage. But in comparison to our region where we really do nothing, the Pinot Blanc is more a bit influenced by the enologist, so by me.
Can you tell me about your philosophy of viticulture and winemaking?
So we follow the same idea of viticulture and enology for a long, long time, basically since the start in our winery. So I had the big advantage to take over a winery where we never used a strong influence of cultured yeast or anything like that. So basically the idea is the traditional winemaking and also traditional in a way over 100 years ago before modern technology came into wine. So before cultured yeast came into wine, before cooling systems or heating systems, before the addition of bacteria or anything to the juice. And also before the strong use of stainless steel. So for our single vineyards, we only use wooden barrels and that idea has been followed in our winery since 1803. For example, we have been writing 'vegan' on our labels for six or seven years now. But when we started labeling the wines as vegan, I emailed all my customers saying we have been vegan since 1803.
We talk about that a lot more in the last years, but for our winery, it always worked out without any additions and so we never saw a reason to start. However, for me, as a young winemaker, my internships were a strong influence. So I worked in the Mosel for Clemens Busch, the biodynamic pioneer in the Mosel Valley, the first biodynamic-certified estate in our area. And internationally, I worked here in New York State for Herman J Weimer, for Fred and Oscar, which was a very important time for me because, at that time, they were starting with biodynamics, so they were doing a lot of trials. Afterwards, I went to Felton Road in Central Otago in New Zealand, which is a longer-established biodynamic estate. After all those stops at the biodynamic estates, especially after Felton Road, I came back home, and I was starting to rethink the process.
I had a conversation with my grandfather when he was over 90 years old, but still sharp and engaged. I told him about modern approaches to winemaking, like biodynamics and following Rudolf Steiner’s principles. He listened closely and found it all very interesting.
Then he asked me a practical question: “What does that mean on a daily basis? When would you prune? When would you finish fermentation? When would you bottle?” So we discussed it in detail.
What struck me was when I explained, for example, that we wouldn’t start pruning before a certain date, he said, “That’s exactly how we worked in the vineyards when I was young.” It was fascinating to realize how much of what we now celebrate as biodynamics—a modern approach to farming—aligns with the traditional methods used before industrialization changed winemaking.
That reinforced my commitment to the philosophy my father followed and that our family has practiced for generations: to fully embrace a natural approach to winemaking. We don’t use any cooling or heating systems or make any additions to the wine.
One of the big advantages of the Mosel Valley is that this approach works perfectly here. Being in a cool climate, we don’t face challenges like picking grapes in high temperatures, as they do in places like California, where harvesting at night is often necessary. Bacteria isn’t a big issue either because our grapes naturally have good acidity and low pH, which act as a safeguard.
The Mosel is a place where you can make white wine without relying on modern technology. For me, the decision was clear: if we don’t need it, why should we use it?
I'm curious about your experience in the Finger Lakes. How does that region compare to the Mosel regarding its climate and winemaking?
Before answering, I should explain how I ended up in the Finger Lakes, as it’s not a place Mosel winemakers typically consider first. When I was at university, David Schildknecht, who visited our winery every year as a wine critic—at the time, I think he was writing for Vinous—helped guide me. David has followed our wines for about 30 years and is, in my opinion, one of the best tasters in the world. He’s incredibly smart, has seen so much of the wine world, and is a great person to talk to.
At the time, I was deciding where to go for an internship, and my father suggested I ask David for advice since he had seen far more of the wine world than my father had. So I did. David asked me what was important to me, and I told him two things: First, I wanted to improve my English, as being fluent would be valuable for the future. Second, I wanted to work in a climate similar to the Mosel Valley because learning winemaking in a vastly different climate, like Chile, wouldn’t translate well when I returned to the Mosel.
David recommended Hermann J. Wiemer in the Finger Lakes. I had no contacts there, so I emailed them, had an interview with Fred Merwarth and Oskar Bynke, and was accepted. This was in 2011, a pivotal time for Wiemer, as Fred and Oskar had recently taken over the estate. Being a young person myself, it was an incredible opportunity. I wasn’t just a typical intern picking grapes every day; I was able to work closely with Fred, the winemaker, and was deeply involved in the work. It was a lot of hard work, but it was rewarding to see the results.
(Hermann J. Wiemer vineyard)
The Finger Lakes region has many parallels to the Mosel. Hermann J. Wiemer himself was from the Mosel and started the estate after having some trouble with his father. He said, "I quit the Mosel, and I'm going to the US," and a few days later, he started his own estate.
The terroir is similar, with slate soils, and the growing season’s climate is also close to Mosel's. While the winters are harsher in New York, the summers are quite comparable. One key takeaway from my time there was the importance of grape sorting, something Wiemer did exceptionally well. However, I also noticed that much of their sorting was necessary because they bought grapes from other growers, where farming practices weren’t always ideal. This led me to conclude that the best way forward for our estate was to avoid purchasing grapes altogether. Today, 100% of the grapes for our wines come from our family-owned vineyards. While this limits production and sometimes causes challenges with importers when we don’t have enough wine, it ensures that if “Carl Loewen” is on the label, the quality is guaranteed.
On a personal note, Fred and Hermann both visited our winery last year during separate trips, which was a wonderful experience. My time in the Finger Lakes was not only valuable professionally but also personally rewarding.
How is climate change affecting the vines and your winemaking?
So yeah, it's always a big discussion. If you want to know if climate change is happening or not, just ask a winemaker. I think every winemaker in every region, talking about parents and grandparents, definitely sees a change in climate. On the one hand, where we are is definitely an area that has had a big advantage with the warmer climate.
Historically, winemaking was more focused on the area of Lancaster, the warmer part of the Mosel, because they could get the Riesling ripe in more years than our part of the Mosel. Now, we have a little bit of an advantage with the warmer climate, and we have maybe a bit more elegance and freshness than the warmer parts of the Mosel in our area. And basically in the Mosel Valley, there was always a saying in the middle of the last century that in one decade you had five good vintages, three that you could make wine, and two where it was not possible to make wine because the leaves were already falling and winter was coming and the grapes had not ripened yet.
A lot of famous estates in the last century didn't bottle the wine every year. They said, it's not good enough, we will not sell this vintage. But I can definitely say in the last 33 years, we have bottled every vintage and every year the grapes are getting ripe. But I am the generation in the Mosel in the sweet spot. So, in Germany, we have a movement called the last generation of happy wine-making in Mosel. And yeah, maybe it's even extreme to say that from now on, we have more advantages of climate change, to be honest, in Mosel Valley, but it's not something that we want long-term. But definitely, from the standpoint of wines, the Mosel has had a big advantage.
Also, the movement of dry wines got stronger and stronger in the last 20 years because also we got the grape brightness for great dry wines. So the quality of dry wines that we have nowadays in Moss Valley was not possible 20 years ago, vineyard wise, climate wise. And that's the nice thing. I feel like really me being the best generation for farming Riesling in Mosel Valley, because now we have the perfect climate to make in the high altitude vineyards, still the traditional sweet style with a lot of elegance and pureness, but in the warmer spots we can make amazing dry wines with fully ripeness and enough ripeness for complexity. And so it's really, it is there happily for us until now as an advantage.
Are there any new projects that you are thinking of implementing at the winery?
That’s a question I get asked quite often as a young winemaker, especially over the last eight years. I’m not someone who believes in making big, sweeping changes because I deeply appreciate the way our family has farmed for generations. In the Old World, there’s a beautiful tradition of following ideas passed down through the generations, and I find that inspiring.
Of course, we make adjustments every year. I’ve conducted many internal trials, particularly in the cellar. For instance, we’ve experimented with new barrels, sometimes fermenting Riesling in a new barrel instead of an old one. We’ve tried bâtonnage (stirring the lees) on Riesling to see how it changes the wine. Over the last eight years, I’ve tried plenty of new approaches, but interestingly, I’ve often found myself returning to the methods my father used.
(1000-liter barrels, called Fuder)
That said, I think it’s important to run your own experiments. After my internships, I saw so many techniques from around the world that I wanted to try them all at home. Every year, we dedicate a few barrels to different methods, and we also test new ideas in the vineyard. But these experiments are always about refining quality rather than reinventing how we work.
Our core principles remain unchanged: focusing on old, grafted vines in steep slopes, prioritizing Riesling, and employing natural fermentation with a low-intervention approach in both the vineyard and the cellar. These are non-negotiable for me.
A good example of our philosophy is what I did shortly after starting university in 2012. At that time, most winemakers, including us, were using pneumatic presses as the standard. But I decided to purchase an 80-year-old wooden basket press and reintroduce mechanical pressing to see how it would affect the wine. We now use that press to make our top wine, the 1896 Riesling, which has received two 100-point ratings from James Suckling. It was fascinating to see how this small change dramatically impacted the wine’s character.
For me, the future lies in exploring how traditional methods can be adapted to modern times. That’s the essence of how we approach things at the estate—respecting tradition while making thoughtful, incremental improvements.
