Weingut Reinhold Haart: 700 Years of Mosel Riesling History

Reinhold Haart

Haart is a sacred name in viticulture, with nearly a 700-year history in the Mosel.

Piesport, Mosel, Germany. Yes, this paradise is real. 
Source: Weingut Reinhold Haart & Google Maps

The year is 1337. You are an ordinary peasant farmer in Piesport, a small town in the medieval Holy Roman Empire — not a unified country like modern-day Germany, but a patchwork of territories ruled by princes, bishops, abbots, and local nobles. Your entire “world” might stretch six miles in any direction. People live in tiny villages along the river, surrounded by vineyards, forests, and grain fields. You may never travel farther than the nearest market towns, like Trier (25 miles away) or Bernkastel (10 miles away).

You live in a small timber house with a thatched roof, dirt floors, and no chimney. In winter, animals share the main room, so everything smells perpetually of smoke and manure. Your diet consists mostly of bread, porridge, cheese, beans, onions, cabbage, and dried fish — and yes, wine or beer is often safer to drink than water. Wine is not merely important to your health; it is the economic, social, and spiritual backbone of existence. Nearly every aspect of life in this region, from taxation to religion, is tied in some way to wine.

A six-mile radius of this place? Yes, please, even if my house smells like smoky poop. Source: Weingut Reinhold Haart & Mosel Fine Wines

In the coming years, failed harvests from 1337–1340 will bring widespread hunger, and the Hundred Years’ War between England and France will begin. The Black Death will reach this area in 1348. Elsewhere in the world, King David II, son of Robert the Bruce, lives in exile. Florence, Venice, and Genoa are beginning to feel the first stirrings of what will become the Renaissance. The Mongols rule China. The Incas remain a small kingdom centered around Cuzco.

It is also in 1337 that the earliest known documentation appears showing the Haarts owning private family vineyards alongside the more powerful and ubiquitous ecclesiastical holdings. A receipt recording the purchase of vineyards from the Catholic Church establishes the Haarts as one of — if not the — oldest viticultural families in Piesport.

If I had an AI-generated montage video, I’d open with us as that same peasant farmer, pausing from tending vines by hand. Then the film would flash through 700 years of history, upheaval, war, and technological change before ending with a peaceful shot of us sitting on the steep hillside of the Goldtröpfchen vineyard — already established in the 1330s — drinking Riesling while doomscrolling on a smartphone.

Source: Google Maps

In April 2025, I spoke with Johannes Haart, current co-owner, winemaker, and cellar master of Weingut Reinhold Haart. The winery produces wines ranging from dry to sweet, from village-level bottlings to single-vineyard Grosses Gewächs sites. As a member of the VDP, they also produce Prädikatswein classifications from Kabinett through TBA.

As Johannes recounted the family history, I found myself daydreaming about life in this charming, picturesque town, perfectly situated on the south-facing bend of the Mosel River. His father traced their branch of the family back to the 16th century, and from that point onward there always seemed to be some document mentioning a Haart in Piesport every fifty years or so.

In the 1950s, a “Brothers’ and Sisters’ Haart” winery operated almost like a family cooperative. When the families eventually split apart, seven separate Haart wineries emerged. The difficult years of the German wine industry during the 1970s and 1980s led to further consolidation. Today, only three Haart wineries remain: Reinhold Haart, Reuscher Haart, and Julian & Nadine Haart. They are distant enough cousins that, as Johannes joked, they could probably marry each other in the American South.

For our purposes, though, we’ll focus on Reinhold Haart. Someday, perhaps, we’ll return to that perfect little bend in the river and meet the others.

Walking up steep slopes at harvest time. Source: Weingut Reinhold Haart

Viticulture

Weingut Reinhold Haart cultivates eight hectares (20 acres) of exclusively Riesling vines, all planted on steep hillsides. Compared with regions in the New World, such as California or Australia, this seems tiny. But the Mosel is more like Burgundy: a landscape of small family estates farming minute holdings of exceptional vineyard land.

Remarkably little has changed since medieval times when it comes to cultivating vines here. Despite all modern technological advances, the vineyards are still worked almost entirely by hand. To achieve the quality expected from such a storied family estate, Johannes keeps yields low through rigorous pruning. Ripeness is monitored carefully, though he prefers harvesting on the later side.

Johannes also spent time in Australia studying winemaking techniques and alternative expressions of Riesling, an experience that continues to influence his thinking.

The Goldtröpfchen (“Drop of Gold”) vineyard features deep slate soils and a due-south exposure, producing wines with compact structure, dense concentration, and impressive longevity. Fruit profiles range from peach to darker red and black berry notes. Ohligsberg, by contrast, produces racier wines driven by stone fruit, spice, and herbal tones. The texture is often more delicate and feminine than Goldtröpfchen, something clearly evident in the tasting.

The major vineyard threats today include powdery and downy mildew, botrytis pressure, viruses spread by insect vectors such as leafroll virus, and trunk diseases like esca. The estate uses rootstocks including SO4, Börner — extremely popular in Germany — and 5C. Johannes noted, however, that his father, who initiated a major replanting effort, never observed dramatic differences in wine quality based on rootstock selection alone. The greater impact came from how the vines grew and how they needed to be managed.

Leaf-pulling practices have also evolved in response to climate change. When Johannes joined his father twenty years ago, the prevailing wisdom was to remove leaves on both sides of the canopy to maximize sun exposure and promote ripeness. But with summer temperatures now regularly exceeding 40°C (104°F), sunburn has become a growing problem. Today, leaves are removed only from the less sun-exposed side, and earlier in the season around flowering. The tradeoff is some flower loss due to wind exposure, but the timing allows the canopy to recover. Then, no additional leaf removal occurs until roughly two weeks before harvest to aid ripening and improve visibility.

Haart has been certified sustainable for the past decade and uses no chemical fertilizers or pesticides/fungicides. Johannes explained that certification itself did not require additional staff so much as disciplined organization and annual paperwork. He also expressed strong interest in the emerging science-based regenerative agriculture movement.

 

Winemaking

Although roughly 70% of production is sweet wine, most of the wines I tasted were dry. Johannes believes the American market undervalues high-end, artisanally made, partially botrytized sweet wines compared with the appreciation they receive elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, the sweet wines I tasted were lovely: dense, balanced, and clearly crafted with great skill.

Fermentations are spontaneous, cool, and carried out with native yeasts in either stainless steel tanks or traditional oak barrels. Aging periods are longer than average, with extended time on fine lees contributing additional texture and depth. Johannes also hypothesizes that prolonged lees aging helps diminish the petrol character often associated with Riesling.

He has adjusted pressing protocols in response to warmer growing seasons, which can introduce slight phenolic bitterness. In the wines I tasted, however, this never detracted from quality; instead, it added another layer of complexity.

The winery does not intentionally block malolactic fermentation, though neither do they encourage it. Johannes described ML in Riesling as resembling “fruit yogurt.” As Riesling ages and becomes less overtly aromatic, however, acidity and flavor integrate more seamlessly, making any ML influence less noticeable. He also pointed out that fully ripe Riesling contains relatively low levels of malic acid compared with earlier-picked Chardonnay. In his vineyards, the acid balance is roughly one-third malic to two-thirds tartaric, whereas early-picked Chardonnay may sit closer to a 50/50 ratio.

For bottling, the winery uses Stelvin screw caps for its base wines — a practice begun about ten years ago — and more recently for village wines as well. Single-vineyard wines, however, remain under cork. Influenced by his time in Australia, Johannes believes Stelvin closures are ideal for wines not intended for prolonged bottle evolution, though he acknowledges they can amplify reductive characteristics considerably.

Source: Coppiera Travel Archives

 

TASTING

2024 Haart Estate Riesling: Very expressive nose, confected orange, hints of peach, chalky/phenolic texture, touch of smoke, charming entry level, acid integrated and not at all aggressive (Vegan)

2023 Haart Piesporter Riesling: Weightier, concentrated, warmer vintage, neutral oak, cirtus oil and red berries, - will likely see warmer vintages like this more and more (peach, riper years can get tropical); Not at all floral! (Vegan)

**2022 Haart Ohligsberger Riesling GG: Citrus blossom, chalk & smoke, concentrated but delicate, feminine, texturally different from Goldtropfchen

**2022 Haart Goldtröpfchen Riesling GG: Hint of black licorice, orange oil, so powerful, long textured finish, - in youth can be closed and need time to open up; this really demands your attention.

2024 Haart Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett: Dry, velvet textured, anise, aromatically intense, integrated acid, melon-canteloup and unripe pineapple