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Our goal is to produce outstanding and distinctive Rieslings. The wines of the early 20th century serve as our greatest inspiration. In key stages of production, we therefore rely on techniques from the era when Mosel Riesling ranked among the most valuable wines in the world.
Winemaking at Weingut Martin Müllen consistently follows traditional methods that have been practiced on the Mosel for generations. Our grapes are harvested by hand and gently pressed using a historic basket press before the must is left to undergo a slow, spontaneous fermentation with natural yeasts.
The wines are then aged in classic wooden casks, where they are given time and calm to fully develop their clarity, balance, and sense of origin. This artisanal approach results in Mosel Rieslings that are refined, long-lived, and shaped by the character of our steep vineyards.
The most important work takes place in the vineyard. Everything we do in viticulture is aimed at harvesting grapes of such quality that no intervention in the cellar becomes necessary.
Wine has been grown on the steep slopes of the Mosel for thousands of years. These steep vineyards possess unique soils, rich in slate, which create ideal conditions for particularly elegant and complex wines. Yet it is not only the soil that makes them special — the orientation toward the sun also plays a decisive role.
The many bends of the Mosel create a diverse topography, meaning that sun exposure can vary greatly from one vineyard site to another. This diversity of vineyard orientation exists only in steep slopes, making truly distinctive wines almost inevitable.
In the cellar, we aim to work as gently as possible and to intervene as little as possible in the fermenting wine. Here, too, we rely on traditional techniques to shape our distinctive wine style.
After the hand harvest, the grapes are placed into a large vat. In the evening, they are gently processed into a mash using a traditional grape mill. This historic mill lightly crushes the grapes and works with great care — in contrast to conventional processing methods, where grape stems can be damaged or even torn apart, releasing excessive solids and harsh phenolic compounds into the must.
We avoid this through our gentle yet highly labor-intensive approach. The grapes are then pressed in a traditional basket press, a process that lasts around 20 hours. This long and gradual pressing extracts a wide range of positive aromas from the grapes that cannot be obtained in other ways. At the same time, the extremely slow pressing allows coarse lees and solids to remain in the press, resulting in particularly clear and pure musts.
