Elbling

Elbling is one of the oldest grape varieties still in commercial cultivation in Europe, and quite possibly the oldest in Germany. It was almost certainly grown on the upper Mosel in Roman times, and for centuries it was the dominant white of the region — far more widely planted than Riesling, which only overtook it in the nineteenth century.

What survives is a fragment. Elbling is now concentrated on the Obermosel, the stretch of river between Trier and the Luxembourg border, where the soil is shell limestone rather than the slate that made Riesling's reputation downstream. Most of it goes into Sekt, Germany's sparkling wine, because the grape's defining characteristic is acidity of a severity that few still wines can carry.

That acidity is the whole proposition. Elbling is aromatically neutral — green apple, lemon, a faint chalkiness, very little else — with low alcohol and a short finish. Described honestly it sounds like nothing at all, and a badly made example is thin and sour. Made well, and particularly with bottle fermentation and some time on lees, the austerity becomes a virtue: bracing, dry, mineral, and genuinely refreshing in a way that riper varieties cannot manage.

It is a high-yielding vine, which historically was the point; it fed the region cheaply for a very long time. Plantings continue to shrink as growers replace it with more profitable varieties, and it now survives mainly through the conviction of a small number of Mosel and Luxembourgish producers who think a grape the Romans planted is worth keeping in the ground.