The Lower Moselle ( or Terrassenmosel) is the name given to the lower reaches of the Moselle river - just under 100 kilometres long - in Germany between Pünderich and the Moselle's confluence with the Rhine at Koblenz. The Lower Moselle landscape differs from that of the Middle and Upper Moselle, much of it forming a narrower valley with high and steep sides in places. On the cut banks of the river that are oriented towards the south and west, vineyards are managed, often on the tiniest, terraced strips of land on steep hillslopes.
The upgrading of the Moselle into a waterway for big ships in the 1960s has permanently changed the appearance of the river and its banks. Five changes of level between Koblenz and ZellRheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, Ausstellungskatalog Mosel – Fluss, Wasserstrasse und Lebensraum, Trier, 1989. in order to build locks for large ships have changed a riverbed that was narrow in places and wide in others with gently sloping banks into a canal-like waterway that is contained by artificial walls and rock embankments in the areas of the locks.
Geography and boundaries The Lower Moselle begins in the wine village of Pünderich and ends at its confluence in the city of Koblenz where it empties into the Rhine at the Deutsches Eck ("German Corner"). It separates the Central Upland mountain ranges of the Eifel and Hunsrück and flows through the two counties of Cochem-Zell and Mayen-Koblenz in the north of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The settlements in the valley are predominantly small villages that increased in area towards the end of the 20th century. Towns with central administrative functions are Zell (pop. in 2009 = 4,200) and Cochem (pop. in 2009 = 4,900). Tourism and winegrowing are important economic factors in this region.
The first division of the river into the Lower and Middle/Upper Moselle may have been a consequence of the foundation of the Roman provinces of Germania superior (Upper Germania) and Gallia Belgica in the 1st century AD.Heinz Cüppers (ed.): Die Römer in Rheinland-Pfalz. Stuttgart, 1990, . The border between the two administrations crossed the river between the present-day Moselle towns of Traben-Trarbach and Zell. In the Late Middle Ages this line divided the Upper (Obere) and Lower Archdiocese (Untere Erzstift) of the Electorate of Trier. From 1798 to 1814 it formed the boundary between the French departements of Saar and Rhine and Moselle, from 1824 to 1999 the provinces of Koblenz and Trier.Franz-Josef Heyen (ed.): Geschichte des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz. Freiburg / Wurzburg, 1981, . It is also where the line of 50° latitude runs, which was often seen as a critical boundary for winegrowing in northern countries. Biologists see in the Mediterranean fauna of the microclimatically favourable southern hillsides of the Moselle valley the markings of a northern boundary of the Mediterranean region. The state wine authorities call the Lower Moselle the Burg Cochem Wine Area (Weinbaubereich Burg Cochem).
Geology and history
The hillsides of the Lower Moselle, with their strikingly varied types of rock and rock formations, bear witness to the end of a development phase in the earth's history in the Moselle area, which began about 390 million years ago in the Lower Devonian. At that time there was a shallow sea in this region that was bounded in the north by the Old Red Continent and in the south by the island structures of the Central German Uplands. From these land masses sediments washed into the slowly sinking shallow sea over millions of years thus forming a thick bed of rock unit with a thickness of up to 14 kilometres, which geologists call the Moselle Trough (Moseltrog). Subsequently, these deposits were solidified through folding, pressure and heat into rock masses of varying stability (cleavage takes place at 250°–400 °C, silicic acid, i.e.quartz, can be mobilised at 300 °C). Most of this development took place in the Carboniferous period, 350 million years ago, when the Rhenish Massif was uplifted and folded.
The shaping of the present Moselle landscape began in the Tertiary period. The water of the later Moselle initially washed through a wide, flat valley in a still relatively gently rolling hill country. In the last 500,000 years the Rhenish Massif continued to be uplifted, so that the Moselle cut deeply into the rock masses.Geolog. Erläuterungen Bernd Ternes, Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum Westerwald-Osteifel, Mayen.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the settlement of this cultural landscape of small, closely built villages surrounded by orchards and gardens and terraced vineyards, only changed slowly. Today many of the former orchard fields lie fallow or have fallen victim to development as villages have grown, to industrial estates and roads, but also large-scale, consolidated vineyards. On the hillsides many old terrace walls have been demolished and levelled in order to simplify farming and construct farm tracks. The impression of a historically evolved, terraced, cultural landscape is thus quite a rare sight in several sections of the valley. With the aid of predominantly publicly funded job creation schemes, overgrown terraces that had run wild have had their vegetation removed in several places in order to preserve the picture of a cultural landscape created by man as well as the biotope of very sunny terraces. The digging up and removal of vines from abandoned sites is also required in order to prevent the spread of plant diseases such as grape black rot or phylloxera.
Abandoned vineyards are a consequence of the structural changes in viticulture, whereby small businesses, especially those which only marketed cask wine, are closed on economic grounds or as a result of a lack of successors or, where vineyards on steep slopes are abandoned in favour of only gently sloping and consolidated sites.Land Rheinland-Pfalz, Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum Mosel, Terroir an Mosel, Saar und Ruwer, Bernkastel, o.D.
From 1999 to 2009 the area of steep hillside being used for viticulture reduced from 998 ha to 764 ha.Office of Statistics, Rhineland-Palatinate. By contrast, the recultivation of older sites, that as early as the Napoleonic and royal Prussian eras were valued and mapped due to their above-average land prices. Many of these sites are stand out due to the unusual stock of vines and wider terraces; instead of the closely spaced individual stakes with the traditional curvature, new vines are increasingly trained using espalier wires and are spaced more widely apart. In the Moselweisser Hamm area, shortly before Koblenz, the recultivation and terracing of old vineyards was carried out using sloping, grassed embankments instead of stone walls. (Fig. 11).
Villages with extensive vineyards are, in the county of Cochem-Zell: Pünderich, Briedel, Kaimt, Merl, St. Aldegund, Neef, Bremm, Eller, Ediger, Senheim, Bruttig-Fankel, Ellenz-Poltersdorf, Ernst, Valwig, Klotten, Pommern, Treis-Karden, Müden and Moselkern.
In Mayen-Koblenz: Hatzenport, Alken, Lehmen, Niederfell, Kobern-Gondorf and Winningen. Lay, Moselweiss and Güls are within the municipal area of Koblenz.
The geographical term, Lower Moselle, covers the areas known for tourism reasons as Zeller Land (region of the collective municipality of Zell between Pünderich and Neef including the villages on the Hunsrück), and Ferienland Cochem ("Cochem Holiday Country"), the region of the collective municipality of Cochem) between Bremm and Klotten.
The Calmont vineyard in Bremm and Eller (the steepest in Europe), the Valwiger Herrenberg and the Kobern-Winninger Uhlen etc. are among the steepest terraced vineyards on the Moselle. In 2003, the Association of German Prädikat Wine Estates (Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter, VDP), following the vineyard assessments of the Vineyard Map for the Province of Koblenz of 1897 (Weinbaukarte für den Regierungsbezirk Koblenz von 1897), assessed specific plots in the areas of Marienburg and Nonnenberg in Pünderich, Kirchberg and Stolzenberg in Hatzenport and Uhlen and Röttgen in Winningen as "First Class". The classification is only carried out for those vineyards that are managed by members of the VDP. Other sites are not assessed by the VDP.
The most popular grape variety grown in the Lower Moselle is the Riesling with 59.7% of the total.Office of Statistics, Rhineland-Palatinate, 2005). It is followed by the Pinot Blanc (12.6%) and the Pinot Noir (5.5%), some way behind, but on the increase.
The landscape with the terraced vineyards on extremely steep slopes on the valley sides of the Moselle has been referred to since the end of the 20th century as the Terrassenmosel (lit.: "Terrace Moselle"), a wine industry and tourist label. It was introduced by the Winningen vintner, Winzer Reinhard Löwenstein. This description caught on due to the features of the countryside with its very steep vineyards, a unique element even when compared with other regions, e.g. the neighbouring Middle Moselle. Both tourist and wine marketing organisations use the term Terrassenmosel instead of Untermosel ("Lower Moselle") for their own identity and manufacturing purposes.
Development of terracing on the Lower Moselle
In the late 1970s, archaeologists discovered the first evidence of possible Roman terracing on the hillsides of the Moselle valley: Land consolidation and the laying out of new farm tracks in vineyards on the Middle Moselle and the upper Lower Moselle exposed the foundations of ancient Celtic houses at the foot of the hillsides. The archaeological sites on the steep hillsides still being managed today could therefore be viewed as evidence of Roman terracing on these slopes in the 3rd century AD.Karl-Josef Gilles (ed.): Neuere Forschungen zum römischen Weinbau an Mosel und Rhein, Gesellschaft für Geschichte des Weines Wiesbaden 1995, .
No such finds were made between Cochem and Koblenz. The reason for that could be – despite much evidence of Gallo-Roman settlement – a possibly lower level of population, but also the construction of railways and roads in the late 19th century meant that the many vineyards at the foot of old hillside sites in e. g. Hatzenport, Karden, Kobern or Winningen were swept away; possible clues for ancient Celtic sites could thus have been lost without anyone realising. For the late 6th century AD, however, there are written accounts of the early cultivation of steep hillsides for winegrowing in a record of a journey on the Moselle by the ancient writer, Venantius Fortunatus: … where leafy vineyards soar up to bare hill tops / and rich shady leaves cover the dry gravel / here the harvest collects the coloured grapes of the vintners / even on the rocky slope he picks the fruit.
The demise of Roman civilisation and changes in population during the Migration Period probably left viticulture on the Lower Moselle largely undisturbed.Hermann Ament: Die Franken in den Römerstädten der Rheinzone. In: Reiss-Museum Mannheim (ed.): Die Franken – Wegbereiter Europas. Mainz, 1996, , pp. 129 ff. Laws passed by the Frankish kings protected the old established winemakers. For example, there were islands of settlement here until the High Middle Ages in which Moselle Roman was spoken instead of a Frankish language.Rudolf Post, Zur Geschichte und Erforschung des Moselromanischen, Rhein. Vierteljahresblätter No. 68, Bonn 2004. The still commonly used dialect word for a vineyard terrace - Chur or Kuur (plural: Chuer, Kuure), derived from cura (Latin for "care") or chorus (Latin for the raised altar area of a church).