Germany's wine country threatened

GRAACH, Germany - Axel Pauly's family has been making wine in Germany's stunning Mosel Valley for 13 generations, but he warns that his livelihood is riding on decisions likely to be taken in the coming weeks.

Pauly and many producers of the region's famed Rieslings have joined forces to battle a massive motorway and bridge project that would straddle the Mosel River and gouge a sizeable chunk out of the breathtaking local landscape.

They have won the impassioned support of international wine critics, who share their concern that a man-made intrusion could throw off the delicate alchemy of the vineyards' steep slate slopes, drip irrigation and sun exposure.

"My customers tell me if you don't fight to protect this pristine environment, it must be worth nothing to you and your product must not be worth anything either," the 57-year-old says, surveying a long, deep gash in the soil above his fields that is to become a four-lane autobahn.

He says that disrupting the natural irrigation system, just one of the valley's blessings, with a "concrete monster" will have dire consequences for fields that have been producing wine since Roman times.

Germany's Rieslings have won ardent fans around the world in the last decade, and exports have soared.

Hugh Johnson, the British expert behind the annual Pocket Wine Books, has thrown his weight behind the protests.

"It is shocking to watch how German politicians are selling out and destroying one of their finest cultural assets," he wrote in a guest column for a German newspaper.

The Hochmoseluebergang (Upper Mosel Crossing) has been in the works since 1968, the height of the Cold War, when the tens of thousands of US troops stationed in the region sought a speedier link between their bases.

The intervening years were marked by revised plans, court challenges and impact studies, which opponents say failed to address their key concerns. A decisive 2008 stimulus package changed the picture.