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About Winery and Wines
Cask Cellar
The cellar of the Bischöfliche Weingüter Trier is located directly under the center of the old town of Trier. The cellar covers about 30,000 square meters and stretches back to the year 800 AD. If you go down in the historical vaulted cellar, built by the Romans, there is an impressive view – 240 traditional Mosel casks, called Fuder, are stored here. Running through the oldest part of the cellar is an historic water line dating back to Roman times. It once led directly to the nearby Imperial Baths (Kaiserthermen) over 1,400 years ago.
Depending on the vintage, the cellar master, Johannes Becker, vinifies 40 percent of the wines in Fuder, the traditional Mosel 1,000-liter oak casks. The wines ferment at cool temperatures and relatively slowly with ambient yeasts. In fact, the cellar master’s work is mostly focused on this traditional vinification of the wines, including tasting and knowing when to find the right moment to bottle the wines. Rieslings fermented in Fuder have very good structure. The wines aged in large casks have a gentle aeration on the lees, which, along with the ambient yeast ferments, gives them a certain durability.
The Fuder, which are used mostly for Riesling as well as for Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc) and red varieties, come from Holzküferei Hösch, one of the few remaining cooperages in Germany. Hösch gets its wood from the Palatine and Hunsrück forests. The wines are given time to mature and harmonize in these big oak casks. The Spätlese and Auslese wines are bottled between June and August of the following harvest year.
Over many decades, the Fuder are filled once again with fresh grape musts each autumn, but not to give them wood aromas, as it is widely used with toasted new oak barrels, which have a capacity of about 225 liters. On the contrary, the typical and pronounced fruity-aromatic components of the Riesling grape remain, which depends on the site and vintage, until the bottling and for many years by vinifying a wine in Fuder.
The remaining grapes are just as expertly vinified in stainless-steel tanks. The quality of the wines in stainless steel is the same as in Fuder. Only the type of wine is different.
Riesling Pyramid
To all Riesling lovers and to those who want to become one, the so-called Bischöfliche Weingüter Trier Riesling Pyramid was developed as a best possible overview of the different sweetness levels, villages, and sites. All wines are included at a glance.
The different levels of sweetness are color-coded: the foundation of the multi-level pyramid is made up of Dom wines, including three different styles of Riesling and other grape varieties, such as Pinot Blanc (Weissburgunder) and Elbling, rosé, red wine and Riesling sparkling wine (Sekt).
On the second level are the village wines (Ortsweine) in the classic Mosel Kabinett style, which are characterized by a lot of fruit and minerality combined with a low alcohol content. For the dry and off-dry Riesling wines, we used the names of the villages where the grapes for the respective wines come from. However, the fruity Kabinetts bear the full name of the vineyard.
On the thrid level of the Riesling pyramid are the wines from famous single vineyards, such as Scharzhofberger, Dhroner Hofberger, or Kaseler Nies’chen. With their unique locations, they represent the highest form of wine culture on the Mosel, the Saar and the Ruwer.
At the top of the pyramid of the Bischöfliche Weingüter Trier are excellent Riesling wines from the best prime locations of the most famous individual vineyards. First class Riesling and certainly among the best of their vintage and origin.