Angelina and Kilian Franzen’s story is every bit as moving as their wines. It begins in the Mosel’s Bremmer Calmont. After millennia of cultivation, these sheer vertical vineyards — among the world’s steepest — had, by the 1980s, been abandoned. One wine grower embraced the daunting prospect of recultivation: Ulrich Franzen. “His vision was to bring the Mosel Terraces, especially the Bremmer Calmont, back to where it once was: at the top of German wines,” explains his son, Kilian. Tragically, in the middle of this heroic project, Ulrich lost his life. Kilian and his future wife, Angelina, then still students, returned home to take over the estate.

Today, the Franzens have 5 hectares in the Calmont and holdings in the venerated Neefer Frauenberg and Kloster Stuben vineyards nearby. The focus is, naturally, riesling, with small plantings of elbling and pinot varieties. Vines are up to 90 years old, their roots driven into the terraced slate, giving immense concentration to the wines. The hand-built terraces that give the region its name have always been essential to enabling vines to grow in the cold macroclimate and steep terrain.

In the cellar, fermentations are spontaneous, some taking nearly two years to complete. The wines go through malo and GGs are bottled late. All this accounts for wines that are as much about texture, herbaceousness, and salinity as they are fruit. They display remarkable freshness and animation as well as power and echoing length. Through pure dedication and heart, the Franzens have made it the source for some of the most arresting wines in all the Mosel.