Egon Müller

Egon Müller is and will be the most sought-after producer in the Mosel and perhaps even in the whole of Germany. At a time when many German producers have focused on dry wines in an attempt to dispel the reputation of German wine as being exclusively sweet, Egon Müller has stuck to the classic Mosel styles with varying degrees of residual sweetness. If you want to succeed with sweetness in your wines, it requires correspondingly high acidity, and this is where Mosel as an area excels. In the best wines from the area, you think poorly of the sweetness, because it is nicely balanced by the gentle acidity, which the northern location with lower temperatures contributes to.

The domain, Scharzhof, is located in the part of the Mosel called the Saar.
Egon Müller is probably the most sought-after producer in the Mosel. His version of the sweetest wine on the scale, Scharzhofberger Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA), is sold exclusively at the wine auction in Trier, Germany, where it easily fetches around DKK 30,000 per bottle – half a bottle, of course. The producer is not organic, but apart from fungicides, no chemicals are sprayed at Egon Müller. Furthermore, they work based on a purity principle of not adding anything to the wine apart from sulphur. The fermentation is also spontaneous without the use of cultured yeast, and the wines typically stop fermenting before they have become completely dry.

The work in the field is the most important, because at Egon Müller it is not about making the wine better in the cellar. On the other hand, it is about getting the best out of the quality of the vines, because if it is not high enough, it will never be good once the grapes have been pressed.
His most exclusive piece of land is the slope of the Scharzhofberg, a so-called Große Lage field, equivalent to the grand cru of Burgundy. The wines from here can make one forget time and place and are expensive, but only cost a good 1/3 of what Grand Cru from Burgundy costs.