The Moselle forms Luxembourg's south-eastern border with Germany for forty-two kilometres, and its slopes are the country's wine region — small, serious, and almost entirely unknown outside the immediate area because so little is exported.
The wines
The Luxembourgish Moselle produces almost exclusively white wine. The main varieties are Riesling, Pinot gris, Auxerrois, Rivaner (Müller-Thurgau) and Elbling, an ancient variety now rare elsewhere.
The country's real speciality is Crémant de Luxembourg, a traditional-method sparkling wine with its own protected appellation since 1991. It is very good and represents excellent value against champagne.
The wines are classified under the Marque Nationale system, and the best producers are found in the villages of Remich, Grevenmacher, Wormeldange, Ahn and Machtum.
Visiting
The Route du Vin runs the length of the river, and cellars along it offer tastings — small family domaines as well as the cooperative Vinsmoselle. The Wine Museum at Ehnen, in a village of round houses, explains the history and the work.
Remich is the main resort town, with a riverside promenade and boat trips. Grevenmacher has a butterfly garden and cellars cut into the hill.
Cycling is the best way to do it: the flat riverside path runs the whole length and connects to the German network on the opposite bank.
Schengen
At the southern end sits the village of Schengen, population around five hundred, where on 14 June 1985 the agreement abolishing internal border checks was signed — on a boat on the river, at the point where Luxembourg, Germany and France meet.
The European Museum there explains the agreement and its consequences, and a monument of steel columns marks the founding states. For anyone who has crossed European borders without stopping, it is worth twenty minutes to see where that came from.
Practical
The Moselle is half an hour from Luxembourg City. Buses run along the valley and are free; the wine villages are close enough together to combine two or three in a day. Harvest is in September and October, when the slopes are busiest and most alive.
Scale
The whole appellation covers around 1,300 hectares, which is tiny by European standards and smaller than many single estates in Bordeaux. Roughly two-thirds of production is handled by the Vinsmoselle cooperative, the rest by independent domaines. Because so little is exported, tasting here is genuinely the only practical way to drink most of these wines.