The Palmberg is Ulli Stein's Grand Cru — a wall of ancient terraces held up by dry-stacked slate walls, planted to ungrafted vines over 90 years old on blue and gray slate. No machine can work a site like this; only a person on foot, which is exactly why Stein went to the terraces in the first place while others took the flatlands. The vineyard sits above St. Aldegund, the village where he was born, and it's cut on one side by a stream that angles the slope away from the river — cool wind pours down that side valley, which once made full ripeness a struggle and in a warming Mosel has become the site's greatest asset. Kabinett Trocken here means bone dry, with none of the sweetness people still expect from the Mosel: this is Riesling as cut and mineral clarity rather than charm. Stein is the sort of grower who spent eight years fighting German wine law to bring back the old straw-wine style, and the same stubbornness shows up in the glass. It rewards patience, but the shape of it is obvious young.