Henri Ruppert (Domaine Henri Ruppert): the quest for terroir

How would you define your wines, in terms of grape varieties and your goals?

At first, my main goal was to produce wines without defects. That wasn't the case in the years after the Second World War: most winemakers in the village had no formal training, they simply passed on what they had done in the cellar, and often that wasn't enough. After that, I went looking for depth, for more muscular wines. That starts with yield: I reduced the yields in the vineyards to get grapes capable of reaching a higher level of quality. Producing little costs more than producing a lot, because green harvesting is done by hand. Then comes the choice of clones: for Pinot Noir, you can have 40 different clones. And then the soil. Today we have Riesling on four different soils, and every time you change the soil, the Riesling tastes different. I love that.

My main goal was to produce wines without defects.

Do people in Luxembourg master these tools and tell stories?

That's absolutely true, you've put your finger on a real issue. We have enough tasting rooms, every winemaker has one, but the key stays under the doormat and they aren't open regularly. That's not the case here: we're open from Wednesday to Sunday. Wine tourism helps us a lot, really a lot. It accounts for almost 40% of our turnover. It has become a very important asset. On good days, we welcome 150, sometimes 200 people. They take photos and videos and post them on Facebook or Instagram: incredible advertising. Wherever there is a critical mass of independent winemakers, we could set up a partnership, a wine bar open regularly in each village. Cycling tourism also seems important to me. With e-bikes, we're getting people back in the saddle who have real purchasing power. You have to create, otherwise you have no customers.

How do you picture the estate in 50 years, in 100 years?

Good question. It depends on how the Moselle evolves. Today, it's easy to expand: many vineyards are for sale or abandoned, and you can even pick the best ones. When I started out, at auctions, I told myself I would never be able to buy at those prices. Now they're going for a song. The climate is changing fast. We've really felt it for about twenty years. This year, the vines are a month ahead of a normal year, and we'll probably harvest from the third week of August. Riesling doesn't like intense heat, so we're already looking at cooler exposures and other grape varieties. In 2022, we saw that the B-grade slopes clearly outperformed the A-grade slopes in quality. Pinot Noir, meanwhile, is entering a climate that increasingly resembles Burgundy's. I'm not keen to change, I'm happy with my grape varieties, but we'll have to adapt.