{"title":"Markus Molitor","description":"\u003cp\u003eMarkus Molitor is the Mosel's great one-man empire, and to know his wines, all you need is a color code. Molitor doesn't belong to the VDP. He uses his own system, where the capsule tells you the style: white for dry, green for off-dry and gold for sweet. That matters, because his Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese come in all three.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarkus took over the family estate in 1984, aged twenty, with about a hectare and a half of vines. He is the eighth generation of his family to grow wine. Since then he has built it into one of the largest family-run estates on the Mosel. He owns steep slate vineyards in some of the Middle Mosel's great sites, including Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Zeltinger Sonnenuhr, Graacher Himmelreich, Ürziger Würzgarten and the home vineyard Wehlener Klosterberg, plus holdings on the Saar. Nearly all of it is on steep to very steep slopes, harvested by hand. The wines ferment with their own yeasts and age on the lees in traditional Fuder casks in a cellar cut into the Klosterberg slate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe range is huge, with dozens of Rieslings each vintage, plus Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and a Riesling Sekt. Expect concentrated, deeply mineral Riesling built for the long haul. The starred Auslesen and gold-capsule wines can age for decades.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"markus-molitor-riesling-sekt-brut-nv-750ml","title":"Markus Molitor, Riesling Sekt Brut, NV","description":"\u003cp\u003eMosel Riesling with bubbles, from a grower far better known for the still wines that made his name. Markus Molitor has been making sparkling wine since the early 1980s, well ahead of Germany's Sekt revival, and he treats it seriously: 100% Riesling off slate soils along the river, fermented first in large wooden casks and then given its second fermentation in tank before being finished Brut. On his still bottles the capsule colour tells you the sweetness, white for dry, green for off-dry and gold for sweet, and this lands squarely in the dry camp, with only enough dosage to round the edges. Molitor took over the family estate in 1984 at twenty and expanded it to around a hundred hectares of the steepest Mosel and Saar slopes, so the fruit here has a serious address behind it. Serve it very cold as an aperitif, or with anything fried.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Banville Wine Merchants [BAN]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44796628435001,"sku":"NYC-BAN-`BJ03182`-081825-40","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0125\/1518\/0601\/files\/Markus-Molitor-Riesling-Sekt-Brut-NV-Sparkling-Wine-Flatiron-Wines-Spirits-New-York.jpg?v=1788273516"},{"product_id":"markus-molitor-alte-reben-riesling-white-capsule-2022","title":"Markus Molitor, Riesling Alte Reben White Capsule, 2022","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe capsule tells you everything the label doesn't: on Markus Molitor's bottles white means dry, green means off-dry and gold means sweet, and this one is white, so it is a genuinely dry Riesling. The fruit comes from his oldest vines, eighty to a hundred years old, on the steep slate slopes strung between Brauneberg and Traben-Trarbach in the Middle Mosel. Molitor took over the family estate in 1984 at the age of twenty and grew a few hectares into roughly a hundred across the steepest terraces of the Mosel and Saar, working with hand harvests, ambient yeasts and old wooden casks in a cellar carved three levels into the slate. Here the grapes get a few hours on their skins before a spontaneous fermentation and a long rest on the lees, which gives the wine breadth alongside the cut. 2022 was hot and desperately dry until autumn rain and cool nights arrived to stretch the harvest out, and Mosel Riesling came in ripe but bright. Serve it cool rather than ice-cold and it will run right through dinner.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Banville Wine Merchants [BAN]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46432358039609,"sku":"NYC-W-BAN-`BJ08428`-083126-233","price":46.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0125\/1518\/0601\/files\/Markus-Molitor-Riesling-Alte-Reben-White-Capsule-2022-White-Wine-Flatiron-Wines-Spirits-New-York.jpg?v=1788447163"},{"product_id":"markus-molitor-riesling-wehlener-klosterberg-spatlese-green-capsule-2024","title":"Markus Molitor, Riesling Wehlener Klosterberg Spatlese Green Capsule, 2024","description":"\u003cp\u003eGreen capsule: in Markus Molitor's code that is the middle setting, off-dry, between his white capsules (dry) and gold capsules (sweet). It is the single most useful thing to know about his labels, because Spatlese tells you only that the grapes were picked late and ripe, not how sweet the wine ends up. Wehlener Klosterberg is the estate's home vineyard, roughly twenty-four hectares of steep, south-facing stony Devonian slate with a high iron content and woodland at the top of the hill that helps the vines through dry spells; it gives elegant, racy, deeply mineral Riesling built to last. Molitor took over in 1984 at twenty and grew a few family hectares into around a hundred of the steepest Mosel and Saar slopes. 2024 was a hard year here, with April frost and a cool, wet summer cutting the crop by about a third, but the fruit came in healthy and the wines have lovely stable acidity and lift. Off-dry Riesling is the most useful bottle in the fridge, and this one will happily sit there for a few days once opened.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Banville Wine Merchants [BAN]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46432358072377,"sku":"NYC-W-BAN-`BJ09691`-083126-234","price":46.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0125\/1518\/0601\/files\/Markus-Molitor-Riesling-Wehlener-Klosterberg-Spatlese-Green-Capsule-2024-White-Wine-Flatiron-Wines-Spirits-New-York.jpg?v=1788273668"},{"product_id":"markus-molitor-riesling-urziger-wurzgarten-kabinett-gold-capsule-2023","title":"Markus Molitor, Riesling Urziger Wurzgarten Kabinett Gold Capsule, 2023","description":"\u003cp\u003eGold capsule, and in Markus Molitor's code that means sweet: this is a classic fruity-sweet Mosel Kabinett, not an off-dry one. Molitor distinguishes his dry, off-dry and sweet Rieslings only by the colour of the capsule, white for dry, green for off-dry, gold for sweet, which is worth knowing because the word Kabinett describes how ripe the grapes were at harvest, not how sweet the wine is; he makes bone-dry Kabinett too. Urziger Wurzgarten, the spice garden of Urzig, is the Mosel's great oddity, a steep south-facing slope of red, iron-rich weathered slate and volcanic rock rather than the region's usual blue-grey, and it gives Riesling a rounder, spicier, fleshier shape than its neighbours. 2023 brought a wet late summer that forced brutal sorting on the Mosel, but growers who got clean fruit into the cellar made wines of unusual harmony, with acidity that flows rather than bites. Alcohol stays low and the sweetness is buoyant rather than heavy, which makes this as good before dinner as with it. Serve it properly cold.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Banville Wine Merchants [BAN]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46432447266873,"sku":"NYC-W-BAN-`BAN`-083126-235","price":41.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0125\/1518\/0601\/files\/IMG-4535.jpg?v=1790207097"}],"url":"https:\/\/nyc.flatiron-wines.com\/collections\/markus-molitor.oembed","provider":"Flatiron Wines \u0026 Spirits NYC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}