Cool Climate Wine Summit

Drive south of Berlin, follow a forest road until a vineyard appears on a plateau, and look to the horizon: five kilometres away, the excavators of an active open-cast coal mine are still at work. This is Weingut Wolkenberg, and the soil under the vines is not ancient. It was engineered from mining spoil and recultivated in a research programme with Geisenheim University that began in 2005.
Weingut Wolkenberg is one of only six or seven wineries in Brandenburg, a region that sits entirely outside Germany's official wine appellation system. The village of Wolkenberg was relocated in 1987 to make way for the mining. The winery carries its name. The winery was completed in 2024.
Sales & Export Manager Philipp Henke spoke with Cool Climate Wine Summit CEO Jan Eggers about working without a regional designation, the grape varieties that suit this landscape, a Wochenende blend built across two vintages, Roter Riesling in sand and clay, a Qvevri project that came back from Georgia with more amphorae than planned, and why Poland is already on the radar for a winery an hour and a half from the border.
Recorded at the Wolkenbergwinery, with a glass of Wochenende and a view of the mine.
Read More
Weingut Wolkenberg at Cool Climate Wine Summit
Article
Website Weingut Wolkenberg

Recording from our Impulse tasting at ProWein 2026 - Nordic Sparkling Wines.

Presenting:
Dyrehæj Johanniter Brut (Denmark, Røsnæs)
Lottenlund Perlé Souvignier Gris (Sweden, Skåne)
Dom Janton Blanc de Blancs Seyval Blanc (Poland, Central Poland)
Skærsøgaard DONS Rosé Cabernet Cortis, Rondo, Pinot Noir Précoce

Bob Molling didn't plan to become a winemaker. He spent six months studying economics, realised a desk wasn't his future, and eventually found his way to the vineyards of the Luxembourg Moselle via an apprenticeship, a harvest in South Africa, and a phone call from his grandmother.

Today he runs Molling Wines with his wife — 4.2 hectares, around 25,000 bottles a year, and a philosophy that can be summed up in three words: no beautification, just pure.

In this conversation with Cool Climate Wine Summit CEO Jan Eggers, Bob talks about what it really means to farm with low intervention (without being dogmatic about it), how the 2023 vintage pushed him to his limits, why economic sustainability and environmental sustainability are the same conversation, and what Luxembourg wine needs to do to find its place on the global stage.

Honest, grounded, and recorded mid-harvest above the Moselle valley with a bottle of unlabelled wine on the table.

Learn more about the Cool Climate Wine Summit at www.coolclimatesummit.com

Philipps-Mühle

Getting to Saxony took three attempts. The harvest kept intervening. When Jan Eggers finally arrived at VDP. Weingut Schloß Proschwitz, head winemaker Björn Probst was in the middle of picking — and still made time to talk.
 
Proschwitz is one of eastern Germany’s landmark estates: 75 hectares, just completed organic certification, and home to one of the world’s last significant plantings of Goldriesling — a variety that barely exists outside Saxony.

In this conversation, Björn talks about the tasting that shaped his winemaking — a bottle from Domaine Zind-Humbrecht that made him understand what wine could be.

He talks about five consecutive summers with almost no rain, the challenge of irrigating young vines while refusing to compromise on organic principles, and why he believes the wine world will eventually catch up with what eastern Germany has been doing quietly for decades.
 
Recorded in the vineyard above the Elbe River, mid-harvest, with a glass of Goldriesling on the table.
 
Learn more about the Cool Climate Wine Summit
at www.coolclimatesummit.com