Above is a snapshot of the middle Mosel heading into the lower Mosel. On the left, you can see the “Hollywood” stretch, the famed villages from Bernkastel through Wehlen and Graach to Ürzig and Erden. Keep following the river downstream past Kröv, Traben-Trarbach and Enkirch (this is where many feel the middle Mosel ends), around the next big horseshoe curve and you come across the tiny village of Alf. This is where Ulli Stein’s hotel, the “Haus Waldfrieden” is.
This is Ulli Stein’s home, “Haus Waldfrieden,” a hotel built in the late 19th century at the top of a vineyard called “Hölle” (hell). It is an amazing place, isolated above the village with only forests and vineyards as neighbors. This is not a functioning hotel; it is only open for friends of Stein, for cultural events, for all of the world’s creative spirits and free souls. Beware of the Spargel schnapps served regularly at 3am after a “strong tasting.”
Just down the river the Alf is St. Aldegund; this is the village where Stein was born and it is the village where the majority of Stein’s holdings are, with a focus on the Himmelreich and Palmberg vineyards.
The detail of St. Aldegund shows the valley that creeps up into the plateau above. To the right of this, turning to run into the valley, is the Palmberg itself. To the right of the village, extending downstream is the Himmelreich vineyard.
The Himmelreich is Stein’s 1er cru vineyard; though this perhaps undersells it. It is a deceptively steep vineyard (as the photo shows, looking basically down at the top of the parked car) with an amazing blue slate soil and ungrafted vines 70 to 80+ years old.
Another photograph from the Himmelreich, looking upstream toward the village of St. Aldegund. While the vineyards closer to the street are flatter and warmer because of their proximity to the river, the vineyard quickly turns up and the incline gets quite severe, ending in numerous small terraces with only one or two rows of vines. These are very good parcels.
The Palmberg: this is Stein’s Grand Cru site and a vineyard that is his spiritual home. I’ve walked this vineyard with Ulli countless times; it is a holy space for him. It is also one of the more dramatic and awesome sites of the Mosel, turning, as it does, into a side valley which keeps it cool. The Palmberg has blue and gray slate soils with ungrafted vines that are 90+ years old.
A close up view of some of the old, dry slate walls that make up the terraces in the Palmberg. Such dry walls are extremely labor and time-intensive to make, requiring a depth of three meters into the hill for every meter they go up. Building such walls is an art form that is being slowly forgotten.
