100% Riesling

Food pairings: An enjoyable, refreshing aperitif, and a fine match for light, casual plates and spicy Chinese and Japanese dishes.

Winemaking: Healthy grapes were picked by hand at 84° Oechsle and fermented under temperature control with indigenous yeasts in traditional old 1,000-liter oak fuder casks, keeping the gentle natural sweetness of a classic Kabinett. The 2025 season began with a dry spring, early budbreak and no late frosts, and a sunny, warm July and August ripened the grapes quickly. The estate began picking earlier than ever, bringing in the Riesling for its Kabinett wines before heavy mid-September rain, and the family compares the quality of the vintage with 2005 and 2022.

Vineyards and terroir: Erden is the first village, heading upstream, in the Middle Mosel's celebrated run of great Riesling vineyards. The Treppchen ("little steps") clings to a steep, rocky slope with vertical rock faces, so steep that its vines are reached by narrow stairs carved into the hillside, and its slate soils give racy, complex wines with intense, spicy minerality and fine balance. Beside the river at Erden stands a Roman-era press house where grapes were once trodden.

Family and history: Weingut Max Ferd. Richter was founded in 1680 as a wine export company, and the family first purchased vineyards in Brauneberg in 1643. The estate mansion and its French baroque garden in Mülheim were built in 1774, and the winery buildings of 1880 hold one of the largest fuder oak barrel cellars in the Mosel. The estate is run by Dr. Dirk Max Ferd. Richter, the ninth generation of his family, with his son Constantin, the tenth generation.

In the pictures: The narrow stairs of the Erdener Treppchen vineyard (photo: Weingut Max Ferd. Richter).