Farewell Hans Selbach

It grieves me to post tidings that vintner Hans Selbach of Zeltigen on the Mosel died Friday, 04 feb.

Selbach led the Selbach-Oster winery from 1966.  While never so famous as a Wilhelm Haag of Brauneberg or a Manfred Prüm of Wehlen, Hans Selbach was their counterpart in Zeltingen: the foremost champion of the great vineyards of his home town on the Mosel.  More than that, his was the vinous medium through which the Schlossberg, the Himmelreich, and the Sonnenuhr of Zeltingen first penetrated the palates and consciousness of a multitude of wine lovers worldwide.

Selbach's widow Sigrid Selbach and his four sons, three daughters-in-law and eight grandchildren survive him.  Son Johannes and Johannes' wife Barbara will continue – along with Sigrid Selbach – to lead the Selbach-Oster winemaking team at Uferalee 23, Zeltingen.

Hans Selbach set an unforgettable example – and by no means just as vintner – for those who had the good fortune to know him.  Many, like me, would not have come to the Mosel or to Riesling save through him.  

The word "indefatigable" is at once too long and too puny to capture the character of a man who drained the cup life offered (full of Riesling, naturally) and then kept on draining it, drawing sustenance from seemingly supernatural sources.  In so doing, he demonstrated how living life with bravery and abandon can go hand in hand with care, patience, watchfulness and meticulousness.

He showed us the vintner's virtues, and that they are the human virtues.

The Germans say that a great wine grower has Fingerspitzengefühl.  But we English speakers absconded with a shorter German word for what Hans Selbach had as a farmer and artisan: knack.  A snap of his fingers presupposed a lifetime of learning and yearning.

In his first wine catalogue, Selbach's friend and importer Terry Theise wrote words about this great vintner that he could then not help but repeat for the next (can it be?) 20 years:

"I often think of Hans Selbach, working away in the cellar and up in the clinging slopes, patiently and painstakingly doing all he can to squeeze everything out of the soil that it has to give, making forceful, uncompromising wines that can never have mass appeal, but working away, in the dark, serving his vision and staying faithful.  And I think his world and ours is not such a very bad place after all."

Please lift a glass of Mosel Riesling in memory and honour of Hans Selbach, and in sympathy with his family.  His presence and his gifts will continue to comfort and enlighten them, and thus enrich the rest of us.

May Hans rest in peace, hope and a satisfied mind, just as he lived.

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Jancis Robinson