Loosen is the Mosel producer behind Dr. Loosen, and he was describing an experiment to revive his great-grandfather's dry-wine method, which took him most of his working life to get right. The line is aimed at natural and orange winemakers who say they don't intervene: his point is not that intervention is good in itself, but that you cannot make something you have not first imagined. He was blunt elsewhere in the same conversation about growers who pick by acidity rather than ripeness.
Well, well, you know, I mean, we are a typical German, I mean, family estate, you know, it started here around 200 years ago. The wine estate started. And, you know, since 200 years, we do more or less recently, you know, basically only recently, I started to produce a bit of Pinot Planck, you know, and very little, 1% of the production. Only as a, my wife's favorite wine was Pinot Planck, so we had to plant Pinot Planck for her. And yeah, and you know, the Mosul is famous for reasoning. And I personally took over the wine estate in the sixth generation on when was it, 1988, I took over the wine estate for my father. And yeah, and we started, say, with not really new ideas. We had been rather going back to traditional winemaking. You know, in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s was very much, you know, I mean, you know, all the wine schools, the wine universities brought up new ideas, the whole tale, you have to do this and this and that. And I think that became too much, you know. And so when I took over, we had been going back to traditional winemaking, you know, give the wines more time again, all these things, you know. And so I think that was the major change I did when I took over, you know, going away from all this industrial, you know, recommendation, what these universities gave you, you know, and so, which was not really very helpful. And nowadays we know that it's good for, I mean, mass production, you know, the wines say, I would say this entry-level wines, you know, in comparison to the cheap stuff, you know, like, you know, what you buy in Aldi and Beetle and so you know. Tupac chucks. Yeah, which was two buck jacks. That was horrible in the 70s. I would say nearly undrinkable. But the industrial winemaking made at least these wines better, but not great, you know. I mean, at least drinkable, you know. So we have been going a totally different direction. We want to get away from that, you know, and producing more kind of more authentic wines again by going back even to the winemaking traditions of my great-great-grandfather, you know, from both sides, from my mom's side and my father's side, because the estate, the Dr. Lozen estate, is basically an amalgamation of two estates. Very unusual. We are a Catholic area. And you know, in the old days, the Catholic breed like rabbits, another kids, you know, we are also six, four brothers, two sisters. And so, but for whatever reason, my mom as my dad had been both single kids and both inherited the wine estate, you know? So therefore we inherited also two traditions. My mom's family comes more from the Prum side. Prum is a very famous family here in the Mosul. So my mom is a descendant from this Prum family. And this family produced, until today, only the traditional fruity style predicate wines, Cabinet, Beteliser, Auslaser, with some little bit of Rishicha sweetness. But my father's family produced only in the last hundred years dry wines. My grandgrandfather, my grandfather made only dry wines, so we inherited two traditions, the tradition of making fruity-style wines from my mom's family and the tradition of the dry wines from our father's family. And I have been going back, that is basically this wine here. I've been going back with our dry wines, GG, and GG Reserve and GG Homage. So going back to the winemaking tradition of my great-great-grandfather from my father's side, Peter Lozen, who produced only dry wines. And in these days, you see, I always say, in the very old days, the people had a lot of time, but no technology. Now, no, we all don't have time, but therefore a lot of technology, everything faster, faster, faster. But in the old days, they couldn't speed up because they had no technology. They had to wait, you know? Okay, they harvested the wine, they pressed the juice, the grapes, the juice kept going into the barrel. There was only barrels. They had to ferment it on indigenous yeast, which took much longer than cultivated yeast, you know. And then they had to wait, you know, to wait until the wine clarified itself and had been finding itself. So they had to wait two, three. And my grandfather even waited with his best barrels even up to eight years in the barrel before he bottled. And therefore that there was no technology like filters and fining. These wines had been all bottled without filtration and without finding. But you had to wait then very long until the wine had been crystal clear and had been totally clear and had been finding itself. And then, you know, but then as soon as the first technology came, filters and everything, people had not to wait anymore. They put bentonite on it, you know? Yeah. Stir it. Next day they filtered it off. The next day they could bottle it, you know? And so, I mean, they saved a lot of time, sure. And then with this technology, the people all forgot this old winemaking, you know, before that, because nobody did it anymore, you know? And I rediscovered this old winemaking, you know, this, I call it always the historic winemaking, so between 1870 and 1930, you know, because I got a very old bottle from a very old customer who still knew my great-grandfather, you know? And he brought me in 1947, you know, this one, you know, Berziger Würzgarten, what we call nowadays reserve, you know?
Yes.
And I thought, okay, dry wines, I'm not sure if they can really age that, because the wine was already 56 years old. But I had been this customer who brought me a bottle as a present. I said, oh, you know, that is still from your great-grandfather. And so you know that your grand-grandfather made only dry wines. I said, yes, I've heard about it, but never had a bottle, you know. And so weeks later, I opened it and I said, fuck, you know, what did this old man did, you know, making dry wines, which are still after 50, 60 years, brilliant. Sure, matured, you know. Maturation is something different as oxidation, but perfectly matured. I love this wine so much that I've been going back to my cellar master, to my, you know, winemaker, and said, Bernie, I think that was 25 years ago or whatever. And I said, Bernie, we have to go back to this old tradition of my great-grandfather making dry wines like he did. They are brilliant, even after 50 years, this 47, they showed so brilliantly. And so he said, oh, well, wait, wait, how do I know what your great-grandfather did? I mean, I said, well, you know, I think you don't have to do much, you know, only press the juice, settle it, put it in the barrel and wait until it is fermented and then top it up, sulfur, and wait two years, you know? I thought, well, I don't think that it is that easy. So we had a little bit of a dispute, you know. But I mean, he was very open and so we developed. And that was therefore that I didn't have the chance to ever talk to my great-grandfather. I would have a lot of questions nowadays for him. So it was more kind of rediscovering this old historic winemaking, which I knew what they did, but the procedure and everything was learning by doing, you know? So every year we learned a bit more, a bit more, a bit more. Because in this case, Bernie was right. It isn't as easy as it sounds. So it has a lot of... Fine-tuning every year. I mean, in general, it sounds easy, you know? But you see, then with certain vintages, you have different, you know, you have to act a bit differently, you know, what is the best juice which can do this and so on. And so there's a lot of fine-tuning, you know. And every year you find another little thing. Oh, here we can improve a bit, and here can be. That's the reason I said, oh, well, I would possibly need another 25 or 30 years, you know, that we can put, say, a whole series of wines, you know, 30 vintages on the table, you know? And then you can start the fine-tuning because then you see, okay, in this vintage, it works that this vintage is like this and this. And then you have all these vintages in comparison. And then you have more an overview from there, you can go on and start improving more because you have more experience with certain vintages which work better. I mean, possibly with some vintages, two years is perfect. With some vintages, we see two and a half or three years is better. Or with some vintages, possibly a little bit less than two years is better. But always on behalf of the experience, the wines have to be clarifying itself and finding itself that you can bottle it without filtration and without finding, you know. It's a super, super, super exciting experiment. But it took my whole life so far, you know, to find out. And, you know, and I think I'm still not there where I want to be. And that would be the great thing if you would have a grandfather or a grand-grandfather who could ask, say, how did you handle this vintage? Because every vintage is different, you know? Every vintage, you have to decide again, oh, God, how we handle this vintage. And we are in this case a bit different. You know, there's a lot of winemakers, you know, the natural winemakers, orange winemakers. They say, oh, we don't do anything. We leave it to God or whoever, you know, making the wine. We don't want to interfere. We don't interfere too, you know. But we still think about, you know, and therefore, I always say a great wine starts in your head. You know, you first need an idea. What is a great wine? And if you want to produce a great wine, you need to have an idea about a great wine. How you want to create a great wine, you know. If you leave it really only to God to make the wine, my experience in this case is that it usually ends up as vinegar. That's the end point of
the wine. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, so from that point, it was a very exciting thing. And we do these things in the dry style, as my great-grandfather made it in the dry style. And here this year, oh, let's taste it because this is a beautiful apparatus wine, you know? 7.5 alcohol only. That is a beautiful wine just in the morning, you know, to refer your palate. And you see, in the old days, you know, in the old days, like my grandfather, great-grandfather, they drink Riesling only matured, you know, like clarets, you know? Claretz in the old days, you know, Bordeaux was always drunk old, minimum 15, 20 years old, because they need the time to rounding up, that the tenants get softer and so, you know. Riesling was the same. They drank Riesling like clarets, you know. My grandfather never touched a RIESLING Wrong it was not minimum 15 years old. And we discovered also this winemaking with the fruity style wines. And now we have Erzigo here, we have 1993. Here, the Werziger Würzgarten, which is in the dry style, we call reserve, you know, dry reserve, two years in the barrel, two to three years in the barrel, and then another five, six years in the bottle before we release it. These wines here, fruity style with a little bit of reserve sweetness in the tradition of my mom's family, you know, the Prum, you know, and Bergweller family. Here you have a bit of Resisier sweetness that was very common and very fashionable in these days. And these wines can age, you know. And a lot of people don't know that these wines can age, you know? And even that they have only 7.5% alcohol. And these wines are also two years in the barrel on the full yeast before we bottle it, you know. And then, in this case, we kept it 30 years in the bottle. And this year, we release it. So this wine was never released. And that's a 93, as you see, 93 now, 33 years old. Hold out. Wurzgarten Spetli. And you see it is a beautiful aroma. And we call these wines tradition, pretty card tradition, we call it tradition, you know? Because it's made in the tradition of the old wine law from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, you know? And so in 71, we got a new wine law, and there things changed dramatically, you know? So the old wine law was much more precise and much more, for my opinion, a better wine law.
I have not prepared this question, but since you touched on it, so what was the difference between? The 1971 and then before that. Yeah,