Oliver Haag (Weingut Fritz Haag): The Slate Keepers of Brauneberg

A Hill Named After Its Wine

The first written trace of the estate dates back to 1605, when the village on the Middle Mosel still went by the name of Dusemond. Its slate hillside travelled abroad long before the family name did. In his 1788 travel diaries, Thomas Jefferson ranked Brauneberg wines first among Mosels, a status confirmed by the tax classification of the region's vineyards carried out under Napoleon in 1804. By 1833, English writer Cyrus Redding reported that Brauneberg had become fashionable in the grand dining rooms of London. Around three centuries after the first record, Wilhelm Haag's great-grandfather married an heiress to the estate of Peter Christian Conrad-Fehres, then chief proprietor on the hill. In 1925, Dusemond renamed itself after its famous slope, and the estate still carries the designation Dusemonder Hof as a nod to its origins.

One Vintage That Lasted a Lifetime

Wilhelm Haag, born in 1937, took over the estate in 1957 at the age of 20, after his father Fritz fell ill. He intended to work a single vintage before returning to his studies. The winery was then a small, respected farm with several agricultural activities besides grapes, in a Germany turning to mechanised, high-volume wine production. Wilhelm answered with one rule: quality as the only path to reach one's goals. Vintages such as 1959, 1971, 1976, 1990 and 1994 built the name of the house. In 1994, Gault Millau named him its first Winemaker of the Year, and he presided over the VDP Mosel until 2004. When he died on 16 December 2020, aged 83, the VDP hailed him as the father of the renaissance of German wine. Lockdown kept the farewell private, and the news travelled slowly.

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Riesling, Steep Slopes, Handwork

Oliver Haag took over in 2005, the year after his father left the VDP Mosel presidency, and runs the estate with his wife Jessica. Before coming home, he trained at wineries in Germany and South Africa, earned a diploma in oenology at Geisenheim and spent five years managing the Geheimrat J. Wegeler estates. For the couple, wine goes beyond a job: a shared passion at the centre of everything they do. Today, their Riesling vines climb weathered Devonian slate, with gradients reaching 80 percent. The focus stays on two VDP.Grosse Lage sites facing south on the riverbank, Juffer and Juffer Sonnenuhr, whose microclimate Oliver credits for Rieslings unmistakable anywhere in the world. Asked what defines his estate, he answers in three words: Riesling, steep slopes, handwork. Four centuries after Dusemond, the formula has not moved an inch.

This article was written by artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editors.