Daniel Twardowski
Mosel
Inspiration comes in many forms and is derived from countless sources. In the wide world of wine, inspirations and their resulting projects are often criticized, with people claiming regions too hot, too cold, too steep or to flat, rarely a ‘goldilocks’ scenario Regardless, when the wine bug hit Daniel Twardowski, it met a man that had never learned the meaning of half-measures.
The son of a sea captain, Daniel was born in Bremen in 1978, and at the age of 15 his family moved to the Saar, It seemed to him that every one of his classmates’ had family vineyards, and the total immersion into his new home instilled an endless curiosity in Daniel. “Instead of discotheques, at 15 and 16 years old, I am reading Hugh Johnson’s atlases, and having a tasting group, cooking and drinking.”
His early tasting groups included Julian Haart an AJ Adam, future luminaries of the Mosel wine world. Listening closely to Hugh Johnson’s decrees of Bordeaux’s great worth, Daniel would purchase Bordeaux and trade it to fund his curiosities, of which Burgundy had become his most fervent love. Soon, as his trading progressed, Daniel was able to fund travels to Burgundy, where he got to meet the Rousseau family and Pascal Marchand, among others.
With Daniel’s jovial spirit still easily filling a room today, it’s easy to imagine some of Burgundy’s vinous legends sensing that in his younger self. But it was Marchand who, after a lunch with Daniel, asked the young oenophile the question that would alter his path: “Why don’t you make Pinot Noir in the Mosel?”
“Spatburgunder is a German selection,” Twardowski tells us today, referencing the German word for Pinot Noir, which also is a name for the clone that had been most prolific in Germany to the time of that conversation in the early aughts. “It’s very strawberry, very much quantity focused, not so much quality - it made about ten times as much quantity to ‘Pinot Noir’, what they grow in Burgundy.”
In the Mosel, he says, nobody wanted to do the work to make a ‘Burgundy’, but Daniel was fixated on making his dream come to reality. “We had the cool nights, some slate, some salt, and the pH in the soil was perfect. I was excited, but you can see those early vintages were pretty extracted.”
With the purchase of eight tenths of a hectare in the Hofberg vineyard in 2005, Twardowski had the old vines he wanted, albeit they were old Riesling vines. So, he cut out most of the vines down to the base, and grafted in Pinot Noir clones that he had obtained from his friends in Burgundy - namely Ponsot & DRC. His early vintages were made in barrels sourced from DRC and Leroy, and to hear him tell it, he was almost imagining those wines when crafting his own. Still, he and his mentors saw potential, and rather than his production bearing the title of “Spatburgunder”, he was encouraged to call it Pinot Noir; watching the ravens clank walnut shells on the bare slate, “Pinot Noix” was born - ‘Noix’ the French term for nut, and not coincidentally what many people considered Daniel as, early on.
“Pinot Noir is like a dancing ballerina”, Daniel says, part joking but also with the recognition of the high-wire balancing act it takes to obtain balance. “I realized soon that I was getting mature, ripe grapes at 11.5% [alcohol]. The clones from Burgundy made less, sure, but the clusters were loose, and with the winds from the mountains there was little disease pressure.” A self-professed autodidact, Twardowski had adapted to his vines and they to him; “I had to transform what I think about the wines, the techniques; now it is all hand-made wines as the ‘old dogs,” Daniel says, chuckling, referencing his wine heroes of Burgundy’s yesteryear.
We’ve sat in a wild amount of tastings, seminars, video calls, and done walk-around visits with winemakers or vineyard owners, and it seems there are two main groups: the aristocratic, well-manicured, never a hair out of place, and then there are the “dudes” (“dudettes” when applicable!). Daniel is unquestionably the latter, someone about whom we have remarked countless times since that we would love to share a bottle or five with. You see, he actually really loves wine, and it seeps from his pores. “The best wines,” he said to us, “Are the ones you finish first. Drink and drink to be happy, not inebriated!
Viticulture & Vinification
2011 was the first vintage of the Ardoise, which remained Twardowski’s only wine until 2018. In 2016, he purchased a little over 3 hectares in Hofberg to add to the 0.8 of his original purchase. 2018 brought two new wines: Daniel released the “Hofberg Reserve”, which was crafted of the oldest parcel of those grafted Pinot Noir vines; the youngest vines gave birth to the Pinot Noix “3rd”, aptly named.
In Hofberg, Daniel says he has 19 plots, and likens the vineyard’s expanse and varying geological outlay to trying to figure out La Tache, Echezeaux, and Vosne’s other Grand Crus in Burgundy. “I call Burgundy flat now!” he decrees.
All of the grapes are hand-sorted, looking for only perfectly healthy clusters. There are no pumps, no filters in the cellar, and everything is moved by gravity. Fermentations are spontaneous with native yeasts, in open tanks and the wines will later spend 17-18 months in barrels. The barrels are mostly at least on their second use, many sourced from Margaux, Rousseau and DRC. 25-50% of the barrels for the Ardoise are new, and the Hofberg Reserve is aged in 50% new oak.
With eight to nine thousand bottles produced every year, this is a project of great care and focus, and he has no expansion plans: “Between me and my wife, we have six kids; still, quality has to be king, not quantity.” Beyond the three Pinot Noix bottlings, Daniel does make a bit of Sekt and Riesling “for the friends - I couldn’t rip all the Riesling out. Julian makes that,” Daniel says, smiling, referencing his good friend Mr. Haart. He claims that Klaus Peter Keller deemed his Pinot Noir vines the “Best genetic quality in Germany, no question,” but adds, chuckling, that his “Grandkids will be happy, because for me the vines are still too young.”
