Rita and Rudolf Trossen decided to break with modern winemaking practices in 1978, when they converted their entire estate to Biodynamics. They have been crafting wonderful Mosel Valley Rieslings ever since. In 2010, encouraged by many of their sommelier clients, they began to delve into the world of natural winemaking with their Pur’us line of wines, which have no intervention whatsoever. These wines have zero additives, not even sulfur, and are unfined and unfiltered. There are some winemakers working organically in Germany, but the vast majority of winemakers in Germany are steadfast users of sulfur to stabilize and preserve their wines, making the Trossens real pioneers in their area. They allow their wines to sit on the lees for extended periods of time “until all biological processes have come to an end.” For us, the wines were the first German wines we ever tasted that made us sit up and notice something different was happening. The depth of character and expression Riesling can reach without additives is truly amazing.

Vinification Method: Grapes are hand harvested and whole bunches are fermented in 1000-liter stainless steel tanks with indigenous yeast. The tanks are cooled by ambient air and fermentation takes place over about 6 months. The wine ages for about 11 months and is then bottled without fining or filtration and zero sulfur is added.

-Jenny & Francois

Most impressively, Trossen takes care to age his natural wines until all biological processes are more or less finished. Here his patient, free-thinking approach to elevage tracks that of peers in Alsace, like Bruno Schueller or Christian Binner. The identities of his rieslings are fluid and very vintage dependent, ranging from off-dry to very dry to pétillant.

Trossen’s wines can be divisive, partly because their lushness and intensity exposes the rigid “classic” Mosel style for the artifice that it is: a limited, stunted construct of filtration and sulfitage. The “Pur’Us” rieslings are vivid, changeable, often redolent of late-spring meadows; their profiles shift subtly with air contact and the level of lees in suspension within a given section of a bottle. They are wines that reward close attention.

-Aaron Ayscough, Not Drinking Poison