Most wine lovers can place Mosel, Rheingau, or Pfalz on a map without thinking twice. Sachsen is a different story. Tucked into the far east of Germany, wrapped around the Elbe River between Pirna and Diesbar-Seußlitz, this is the country’s smallest classified wine region and one of the northernmost vineyard areas on earth. Fewer than…
Ask most wine drinkers to name a German wine region, and you will hear Mosel, Rheingau, maybe Pfalz. Württemberg rarely comes up, which is strange given that it is the fourth largest wine region in the country, with roughly 11,500 hectares under vine stretching along the Neckar River from Heilbronn down past Stuttgart toward Tübingen….
There is something quietly defiant about Saale-Unstrut. At 51 degrees north, this is one of the most northerly traditional wine regions in the world – a place where vines cling to sun-warmed limestone terraces, where medieval monasteries gave shape to viticulture over a thousand years ago, and where a bottle of wine from a local…
There is a saying, attributed to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, that captures this corner of Germany better than any wine guide could. Passing through the region in 1764, he reportedly remarked: “This is where Germany begins to become Italy.” Whether or not the quote is apocryphal, the sentiment holds. The Hessische Bergstraße runs along…
There is a particular pleasure in discovering a wine region that does not shout for attention. The Nahe has never had the romantic marketing pull of the Mosel, with its postcard-steep riverbanks and tourist boats, nor the polished prestige of the Rheingau. What it has instead is something arguably more interesting: a geological complexity that…
There is a particular pleasure in arriving somewhere you did not expect to be moved by. Most wine lovers have a mental map of Germany that runs through the Mosel, the Rheingau, maybe the Pfalz, regions that have done a good job of publicising themselves. Franken rarely appears on that map, yet it is one…
When most people think of German wine, the mind defaults to Riesling from the Mosel, those steep slate slopes plunging toward the river. But Germany has another story to tell, one written further south, warmer, richer, and unmistakably shaped by the Pinot family. Baden is that story. Stretching nearly 400 kilometres from Heidelberg in the…
The Rhine Bends and Greatness Begins There is a moment when you drive the Riesling Route west from Wiesbaden and the Rhine suddenly opens up beneath you, wide and silver-grey, the slopes dropping sharply to the water’s edge. Vines cling to those terraces in long, disciplined rows. Castles break the treeline. And somewhere in the…
There is a moment, driving south along the Deutsche Weinstrasse in September, when you understand exactly why the Romans settled here. The Haardt mountains sit at your back, blocking Atlantic rain; the Rhine plain stretches golden ahead of you; and vines press right to the roadside, close enough to brush the car window. The Pfalz…
There is a stretch of the Rhine between Bingen and Bonn where the river narrows, the hills close in, and vines grip the rock at angles that would give most viticulturalists pause. This is the Mittelrhein, one of Germany’s smallest wine regions, one of its most visually dramatic, and arguably its most underrated. The name…