20213041_WGDE2021_ENGL

RHEINGAU | A PORTRAIT OF THE REGION
Photos: www.rheingau.de/Rüdesheim Tourist AG/Karlheinz Walter, provided, Marcia Breuer/Weingut Georg Breuer
the discourse that is still prevalent and
even pervasive amongst Rheingau
winemakers today: the division between
“Berglagen”, or hill sites, which should be
seen as privileged, and the rest. If you look
at Dünkelberg’s map, it is above all the
sites beyond the river which are highlighted
in the deep red reserved for first class sites:
in Rauenthal these are Gehren, Wieshell
and Rothenberg. Wieshell has now been
subsumed into Baiken and Gehrn. The
dark red outline of the Rothenberg, as
marked on that map, does not include the
Nonnenberg. Both Gräfenberg and
Turmberg in Kiedrich are marked dark red
and so are Steinberg and Schloss
Johannisberg. Next to these, the tiny dark
red spots of the Hochheimer Domdechaney
and the Erbacher Marcobrunn hardly
seem significant.
The Geisenheimer Rothenberg and the
different sites on the Rüdesheimer Berg
take a middling rank. The cliché of the
“Berglagen” purports that the soils there
are stony and characterised by slate and
that the resulting wines therefore are
“cooler”, more mineral and firm. Of
course, the 50-80m/164-262ft of altitude
Riesling expert Tom Drieseberg runs not one
but two top Rheingau estates: J. Wegeler
and Krone Assmannshausen
Fred Prinz of Weingut Prinz farms his
high altitude sites in the Rheingau
according to biodynamic principles
make a climatic difference. However, if
you look at the soil maps of the vineyards
published by the regional Hessian
government in the 1980s and 90s, that
image of the stony “Berglagen” clearly
starts showing cracks. Let’s take the
Johannisberg: Dünkelberg restricts its first
class status to the central knoll where the
soils are actually “deep, dry to fresh,
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