Thörnicher Ritsch

The Thörnicher Ritsch

The rocky ridge of the Ritsch lies enclosed between the Salm and Kailbach valleys. The core of the Thörnicher Ritsch runs exactly parallel to the river and is a typical impact slope. The pure southern exposure and an extreme slope inclination of seventy percent, are its unique climatic potential in the Mosel valley. The Riesling from this site is characterised by the mineral flickering of the blue slate and is known for its above-average ripening potential.

The Ritsch - rocky, steep, rugged, a monument of Riesling

The Thörnicher Ritsch rises almost dramatically above the Mosel. It looks to the observer like a monolith carved into the rock with its very own bizarre formations: primal, ridge-like slate rocks, rugged terraces, crumbling dry stone walls and stony, cracked soil. The wooden Wingerts posts, where the vines have been stretching up into the sky for centuries, look like the lances of a long-dead army standing side by side. The name of the world-famous vineyard derives from the brittle slate of the site. The Ritsch, a mountain so steep that the medieval vernacular spoke of a "Steinrutze". In the steep rocky slope, the flaky and brittle slate is loosened by weathering and erosion and "slides" down into the valley. Due to the breaking away and sloping rock, it was not possible to build roads in the Ritsch until recently, as the paths would have slid down the steep terrain. Until the present day, cultivation was carried out via ancient stone steps and footpaths that were laid out hundreds of years ago. The historic vineyard of the Thörnicher Ritsch has remained a living cultural monument to this day, and many areas of the vineyard are still cultivated as they were a hundred years ago.

The great fame

Until after the Second World War, the Thörnicher Ritsch was one of the most renowned vineyards on the Mosel. As early as 1898, the magazine "Weinblatt" ran the following headline: "...the Ritsch, a steep vineyard opposite Thörnich, is the best vineyard in the village, indeed one of the best on the Mosel. Rieslings from the Ritsch had cult status at the beginning of the 20th century and were many times more expensive on the wine lists of the time than, for example, wines from the Canzemer Altenberg or the Ockfener Geispfad. Even the royal houses appreciated the fine wines from Ritsch. During the reign of Queen Victoria it was good manners to serve a glass of Ritsch in aristocratic circles. The Ritsch gained great international attention in 1956 when the then German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer travelled to Moscow and presented Nikita Khrushchev with 20 bottles of the 1953 vintage. With this gift, he was able to persuade him to release the last German prisoners of war.

Forgotten

Although the Ritsch is one of the oldest and highest quality vineyard sites on the Mosel, it is one of the most underrated sites today. The imposing mountain had fallen into oblivion in recent decades and was severely threatened by decay. Its fate was that the 22-hectare "Ritsch", as it is popularly called, consisted of a hodgepodge of small plots. There were over 1.200 (!!!) individual plots, some of which were only a few square metres in size, and with more than 100 owners. In the past, the fragmented land ownership and the lack of development of the terrain had led to more and more vineyard parcels being abandoned and the image of an old historical wine cultural landscape being severely impaired.

The land consolidation

The Thörnicher Ritsch was one of the last untouched steep slopes on the Mosel. The impassable terrain and the laborious cultivation in economically difficult times caused more and more vineyard parcels in the Ritsch to become fallow land. What threatened to get lost forever was returned to the mountain by the land consolidation in 2016. The parcels of land that had been "broken up" into smallest pieces were merged into new sizes and arranged into new ownership as units that could be managed rationally. To make the many terraces accessible, seven monorack railways were built. These railways serve to overcome the extreme slope and facilitate the work of the winegrower. Together with the renovation of the many dry stone walls, the cultivation of this unique vineyard area could be ensured in the long term and the formative wine cultural landscape could be preserved.