Lower Moselle

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.

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.

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).

[4] 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.

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.

[6] 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.

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 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".

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.

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 High Middle Ages was the epoch when manual labourers began to build stable terrace walls - based on skills learned in constructing castles in challenging engineering situations on rocky ridges and above steep precipices.

Around 30 per cent of the construction costs were estimated by Archbishop Balduin[12] to have been consumed by the firing and transport of the necessary lime for mortar and plaster of his castles in the Middle Rhine-Lower Moselle area.

The rise in population in the Middle Ages, the demand of the trading centres of Cologne, present-day Belgium and the Netherlands and the, compared with today, high per-capita consumption of wine must have led to an expansion of the winegrowing areas and associated terracing needed.

Aid from the public sector, funding from national and European budgets, and in particular the installation of monorack railways developed in Switzerland for steep slopes, that simplified the mechanical transport of men and materials, are now preventing some sites from falling into decay.

The advantages of slope terracing to increase the area available for cultivation were mentioned in ancient Roman agricultural instruction books (e.g. Junius Moderatus Columella around 60 AD in De re rustica).

An uphill oriented gradient to help stabilise the wall can be achieved by angled construction, or the stacking of stones that are repeatedly set back from the bottom upwards.

The terraces are, in addition to their agricultural engineering significance, examples of great cultural historical value, their organisation and often masterful architecture witnessing as far back as the Middle Ages.

The small scale structure of the plots forms protective barriers against plant disease and provides habitats for a variety of warmth-loving flora and fauna.

The Apollo butterfly, the green lizard, the wallflower and rock bunting are only the best known representatives of the ecosystem of the Terraced Moselle that have been recorded in the case studies of small animals and plants of the region.

An amalgamation of the plots, new tracks across the hillside and the abandonment of small terraces in higher locations enabled planting based on economical methods of cultivation.