SteinRiesling “Striehween” 2018 (375ml)

In  2018, Stein was able to make around 160 liters, some 400 half-bottles, only his fourth legal straw wine, or as he calls it, “Striehween” (we discuss the process and the term, below). Stein has not made one since.

These are true Stein rarities, genius bottles that he normally only opens at the estate, for particularly curious or friendly guests. A rather long story comes as part and parcel of this bottle being opened. I’ve heard it probably 100 times; I’m always thankful to hear the story again, to taste the wine again.

For all of the unctuous density of the wine (the 2018 was picked at 153 Oechsle in late October, has 169 grams residual sugar and a whopping 11.5% alcohol), the shocking part of this wine is its restraint, its elegance, its brightness? Yes, there is that honey-tinged everything, dried stone fruits (peaches, apricots), and raisins, moist and seductive melon, and a whole garden’s worth of perfumed flowers. There is a quixotic, curious greenness, little slivers of kiwi and green melon, even some candied lime and ginger to add finesse and detail.

Yet the truly remarkable, spellbinding part of this wine is its profound length and lift; a saline-tinged ripeness that feels brighter and livelier with every passing moment. I clocked the finish well past a minute. (It has a shocking acid of 9.2!)

If Mosel straw wine, Striehween, is obscure, irrelevant – we will discuss the historical weight of the practice below – one cannot argue that it is not painfully, deliciously beautiful. This is a profound bottle of Riesling.

Most of you will never have heard of Mosel straw wine; we hadn’t heard about it until Stein told us his stories. The process, you’ve likely gathered, involves drying the picked grapes on straw mats. This process is very old, at least dating back to Roman times. Any number of contemporary wine cultures have some version of a straw wine, from Austria’s Strohwein (we will return to this), France’s Vin de Paille, Italy’s Vin Santo and passito, to name only a few.

Though the details vary, the fundamental process is the same: extreme concentration through evaporation.

In an arid landscape (Italy, Spain, France’s south, etc.) with plenty of warmth and sunshine, this process would have an obvious and easy appeal, in the cool and wet haunts of Europe’s north, such wines are very difficult to make. Essential to the process, after all, is a dehydration without any type of fungus or rot. In cool, humid places like the Mosel valley, this is very difficult.

In the 19th century Strohwein was not uncommon in the Mosel. It was perhaps far from common, but there was a cultural significance to the practice. With the 20th century the importance of ripeness and concentration either by freezing (Eiswein) or by fungus (botrytized wines like Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese) grew, so that already by mid-century Mosel Strohwein was something of a lost practice – or at least very rare. To some extent, this makes sense, these other types of dessert wines play to the region’s strength as a cold and humid valley.

The 1971 wine law was the final nail in the coffin: This infamous law declared Mosel Strohwein illegal and the practice, for all intents and purposes, came to an end. Until, that is, our hero Ulli Stein began his legal battle for this historic genre of Mosel wine.

Now, if Stein’s fight for Mosel Pinot Noir has had profound implications for this valley (I think it is fair to say this is one of the most fascinating landscapes for German Pinot Noir right now), the legacy of Strohwein is much smaller, more esoteric.

Yet for Stein, it is the absurd specificity of the practice, its heroic qualities in a cold and wet landscape, that has driven him to fight for this historic wine.

Consider that not only does the winemaker have to keep the grapes themselves in perfect condition until late in the harvest, but they then have to pick the grapes, one at a time, to preserve them perfectly. The grapes are gently laid into a bin of straw. These grapes (in the case of the 2018) were then dried for three months, kept in a clean and dry place with rigorous circulation. The bins are tended to and edited, as necessary. Many grapes inevitably have to be removed. After this process, the grapes are then gently pressed, for two days and two nights to extract only the clearest juice.

Because of the extreme density of the wine, fermentation is very slow; the 2018 Striehween fermented for over two years. It was only bottled in the spring of 2021.

There is nothing, nothing, about this wine that is not extreme and specific. Even the name on the label, Striehween, has a story.

While Mosel Strohwein (the proper German phrase for straw wine) was outlawed, from 1971 until Stein’s lawsuit made it legal again in 2008, the Austrians trademarked the word “Strohwein” as an Austrian category of wine. Thus, even after Stein won his legal battle in Germany to produce straw wine in the Mosel, the word itself was no longer allowed for a German wine. Thus, in an effort to protect the practice for the Mosel, Stein had to come up with an alternative. He landed on the Mosel dialect, “Striehween.”

History is rarely neat, or easy, or simple. And even if this little part of Mosel wine history is a bit absurd, trust us the wine is sublime.