(Claude Auguste / Manfred Klimek – Editorial team)
The closure of the von Hövel winery on the Saar has surprised many. Yet the winery is not a direct victim of that much-quoted “wine crisis” which has been making the headlines for months. The decline in sales in Europe and the USA explains only a small part of the story. The real reason lies deeper – in a personal crisis within the management structure of the estate. It is not for outsiders to pass judgement on that. Anyone who has experienced how existentially such upheavals can affect people knows: sometimes pulling the emergency brake is not a failure, but a necessary act of self-preservation. Businesses are not machines. They are carried by people – and when these people, these old family businesses, reach their limits, everything begins to totter. That an appallingly bad bureaucracy and the enormous labour costs of the steep slopes also played their part is beyond doubt.
With von Hövel, however, more than a business disappears. A chapter of German winegrowing history falls silent, one that reaches back to secularisation. In 1803, amid the turmoil following Napoleon (and to raise money for the French campaigns), ecclesiastical properties were confiscated and auctioned off. The holdings of St Maximin Abbey, cultivated by the Church for centuries, passed into private hands. The Saar and the Moselle became Prussian, later part of an empire whose Rieslings enjoyed worldwide prestige. In London, New York and St Petersburg, they were considered more precious than many a Bordeaux.
Von Hövel was an heir to this era. The estate was associated with sites such as the Oberemmeler Hütte and parcels in the Scharzhofberger – names that carry weight in the international wine world. It joined the circle of leading quality wine estates early on, long before modern branding began. This region once lived from the worldwide glory of its feinherb and fruity-sweet Rieslings.
The fact that such an estate is now closing also speaks of an exhaustion that extends far beyond wine. The post-Covid years have thrown many areas of the economy out of balance: rising costs, higher wages, fragile supply chains and a general sense of uncertainty. Particularly in the steep vineyards on the Saar and Moselle, where more than a thousand working hours per hectare per year are necessary, rising wages have an immediate existential impact. Economic reality meets craftsmanship and tradition here.
And yet a contradiction remains: it is precisely on the Moselle and Saar that the classic Kabinett wines are produced – those low-alcohol, elegant wines that ought to fit perfectly into the present day. Eight or nine per cent alcohol, vibrant acidity, a touch of fruit sweetness – wines with drinkability and culinary versatility. They would seem tailor-made for a generation that consumes more consciously and is wary of high-proof drinks.
But this is where the structural problem lies. Many estates struggle to recognise fruit sugar and low alcohol openly as a contemporary strength. Too often, sweetness is reflexively read as old-fashioned instead of as a traditional component of an independent style. The institutions seem cumbersome, communication hesitant. There is no instinctive German wine patriotism. People look more towards Burgundy or Tuscany than towards their own history since Napoleon. Yet before 1803, large parts of the top sites belonged to the Church – and it was secularisation that turned them into bourgeois property and an international brand.
With von Hövel, then, it is not just a business that comes to an end. Another piece of that long line ends – the line running from monastic property through Prussia to today’s steep-slope economy. The vines remain (perhaps). The sites remain (perhaps only as names that preserve their memory). The history remains. But one fewer name carries it forward.
Perhaps this turning point also presents a task: to understand low-alcohol Kabinett wines not as a relic, but as the future. The Saar can be modern – it simply needs the courage to call itself that.