2022 Heymann-Lowenstein Riesling Stolzenberg GG Mosel 750 ml

Reinhard Löwenstein is one of the handful of winemakers to truly earn the term visionary. When he and his wife Cornelia founded Heymann-Löwenstein in 1980 on the precipitous slate terraces of the lower Mosel, dry Riesling from this part of Germany was practically unheard of.

He didn’t just ignore that consensus—he coined a name for the region (Terrassenmosel), helped rewrite the rules of what Mosel Riesling could be, and built one of the most singular estates in the country. Heymann-Löwenstein wines are powerful, textured, and profoundly mineral in a way that’s nearly impossible to replicate—because few winemakers, even today, are willing to commit to their time-consuming, risk-taking vinification and élevage.

The Stolzenberg sits in the village of Hatzenport, about halfway between Koblenz and Cochem along the lower Mosel. The slopes run between 100 and 150 percent gradient—modern farm equipment is useless here, every vine is tended by hand, and when heavy rains wash soil downslope, workers carry it back up by hand. It is one of the most physically demanding places to grow grapes in the world, and the reason the wines taste the way they do.

It’s also impossibly tiny: the entire vineyard is barely four acres, and Heymann-Löwenstein farms just a 1.5-acre sliver across two parcels. The grey-brown Devonian slate and south-facing aspect give the wine a character that’s warmer and deeper than the estate’s other sites—more stone fruit and flesh, but with the same insistent mineral thread running underneath.

The 2022 vintage on the Mosel was defined by drought and heat, but the old vines here responded with precision rather than weight—exactly the kind of year that rewards a site like this.

The designation on the label—GG, or Grosses Gewächs—is the top tier of the VDP classification system, Germany’s answer to Grand Cru. It can only appear on dry wines from classified grand cru vineyards, and its production is governed by strict yield limits and harvest standards. What that means in practice: this is as serious as Mosel Riesling gets.

We tasted enough Heymann-Löwenstein over the years to know that bottles like this don’t come around often. The 2022 Stolzenberg GG is exactly the kind of wine we built this place to find.