Eroica: 25 years of Ernst Loosen’s Washington Riesling collaboration with Chateau Ste Michelle

‘The whole thing started in [19]99 when I was visiting Oregon’, says Ernst ‘Ernie’ Loosen, explaining the origin of the Eroica collaboration with Washington’s founding winery, Chateau Ste Michelle.

Having embarked on a joint venture with the Antinori family in 1995 at Col Solare on Red Mountain, Ste Michelle had shown an aptitude for international collaboration. As one of the largest producers of Riesling in the world, there seemed to be a natural synergy and collaborative opportunity between Ste Michelle and Loosen, the global spokesman for Germany’s iconic Riesling.

Seeing an opportunity in the northern reaches of America’s wine country for a grape of singular importance to his home region and Germany’s wine identity, Loosen made the first overtures.

He explains: ‘Kirk (Willey, CEO of Loosen Bros USA) and I wrote a four-page proposal and sent it to former [Ste Michelle] CEO Allen Shoup. He replied almost immediately and said, “let’s do it”.’

Notes and scores for vintages of Eroica below

Reclaiming Riesling

While Riesling was once the most expensive wine in the world, its reputation and pedigree had fallen on hard times.

‘I was a little frustrated with the state of Riesling in those days. Even Germany, in the 1980s and a little bit afterwards, I have to be honest, they pretty much [expletive] it up,’ Loosen admits. ‘A British journalist created this little booklet called “Super Plonk”. It was regularly that German Rieslings like Blue Nun, Black Tower, and Madonna would win that prize.’

‘It became known as cheap and sweet, and suddenly that became the reputation of Riesling,’ Loosen adds. ‘This was so crazy because, at one time, 100 years ago, Riesling was the most highly regarded, most expensive wine in the world, prized more than Burgundy. I knew there was nothing wrong with Riesling, but there was undeniably something wrong with the customer perception.’

Loosen thought that this collaborative opportunity would allow him and Chateau Ste Michelle to recast the image of Riesling in the single biggest wine market in the world, the US.

‘I thought, well, we Germans don’t seem to get it, so maybe this joint venture might help us re-establish this reputation here. The goal was to reinstate Riesling’s reputation and make the best Washington state Riesling we could. At that point, there wasn’t a global definition of Washington Riesling and I think Eroica helped establish that style,’ Loosen says.

Riesling in the desert

With only a few exceptions, grapes in Washington are primarily grown in a desert climate. This seems counterintuitive to the cool climate home of this delicate white grape.

‘We wanted the wine to be all about acidity; that’s the identity of Riesling, and we didn’t want it to go as sweet as we do in Germany. We landed on a style that we call feinherb in the very old days in Germany, a medium-dry style. The way my grandfather did it.’

The process has been an evolution. Changing the approach to viticulture has played a role in shaping the wines of the Eroica partnership in an effort to find a ‘sweet spot’ for a medium-dry wine in the desert.

‘When we first started, they were very proud of the Riesling they were producing from this place, Cold Creek Vineyard,’ Loosen remembers.

‘My god, it was like the hottest place you could possibly pick to grow Riesling. I got them to change that, and we’ve moved the production almost entirely to the Ancient Lakes area, which has a higher elevation and is much cooler. It’s one of Washington’s coolest appellations.’

Unique soils

The famous vineyards of the Mosel are known for their blue slates. In Eastern Washington and at the Ancient Lakes site, Evergreen Vineyard, there is a different stony composition to the soils, known as ‘caliche’.

A product of calcium carbonate bonding with other soil types, caliche forms a hard, white, impervious layer in the soil.

Ryan McAdams, vineyard manager for the Ste Michelle estates, explains: ‘There is a caliche layer throughout Evergreen; in some places, it’s just two to three inches, and in other places, it can be a few feet down. Caliche is a hard, solid layer of a rock-like material. We only get, say, eight inches of rain a year at Evergreen, but if you go out there in the spring, you’ll have standing water in the vineyard even if it hasn’t rained much because the caliche doesn’t let the water through.’

‘We have some soil diversity throughout the site, and the depth of the caliche can show up in the wines in different blocks of the vineyard. It helps to have that kind of diversity when we’re blending, giving us a palette of distinct flavour and aroma profiles to help us make our wine,’ McAdams concludes.

A range of styles

The main Eroica bottling has moved from a more Spätlese style in the first few years of release to today’s classic off-dry or feinherb style.

In addition, there is a range of Eroica bottlings from Eroica Gold, made in the Auslese style and the TBA or Trockenbeerenauslese bottling, known as Eroica Single Berry Select, fully botryised grapes, the Single Berry Select, sold in half bottles is Washington’s most expensive wine by volume. It’s a rare wine in the US.

In 2016, Eroica launched the XLC, a GG, or Grosses Gewäches-style bottling. Made in the traditional German style: ‘In 2016, I asked Bob Berthau, why aren’t we doing a dry wine in the style that my grandfather made,’ Loosen asked.

‘We use the exact same winemaking method we used historically, which I use for my GG wines today in the Mosel. This old technique of winemaking gives these wines an enormous ageing potential. We leave the wines on the lees for two years, and the result is stunning.’

Eroica: A selection of new and aged wines

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