Nat'Cool Riesling Natural

FIO is the Mosel project of Dirk Niepoort, his son Daniel and the Piesport grower Philipp Kettern (of the Lothar Kettern estate, per the US importer Skurnik), founded in 2012 according to German merchants (the producer's own site names the three partners but no date). The idea, in the producer's words, is old-school wines with long elevage and traditional techniques for natural stabilisation: everything from steep slopes, spontaneously fermented, long on the lees in old Mosel fuders, bottled unfiltered with no or minimal added sulphur, then left up to two years in bottle. The US importer Skurnik adds that the wines come from steep sites in Piesport and Leiwen, with Goldtröpfchen, Josephsberg and Falkenberg supplying the top material, farmed without herbicides, chemical fertiliser or pesticides, with sheep doing the weeding, practising organic without certification.

Nat'Cool is Niepoort's one-litre natural-wine concept ("cool price, less is more"), started with a Bairrada Baga and now also carried by partner wineries such as FIO, whose Riesling is the Mosel entry. The producer describes it as a blend of two vintages from the finest steep Riesling sites in Piesport, fermented for one to two years on full lees with whole clusters, partly in oak and partly in stainless steel. Skurnik puts the whole-bunch share at 50 percent, lists the vineyards as several in Piesport and Leiwen on slate and loam, and names the vessels as oak and stainless steel; the producer gives no percentage and names Piesport alone. The label is a Landwein der Mosel, declared "hefetrüb" (cloudy from the lees), 10.5 percent alcohol in a one-litre bottle, and this bottle is lot F 24-1 with an importer date of 22 January 2024. Sulphur for this particular wine is not specified beyond the house rule of none during winemaking and none to minimal at bottling; "Natural" on the label is not a zero-sulphur claim.