The most northerly of the districts we visited this time is the Rheingau where the river Rhine normally flows quietly in an east-west direction, but this year after the extensive rain, the river barges have to work harder if they are to get down to Basel.
Producers in this episode:
- Jakob Jung, Erbach am Rhein
- Weingut Leitz, Rüdesheim am Rhein/Geisenheim
This is part of a series on German wines, and above all a selection of quality German producers in five wine regions in Germany. This is the result of BKWine’s reporter Göran van den Brink’s big German tour in the summer of 2024, in six parts:
The water surface and the south-facing mountain locations used to be a prerequisite for getting ripe grapes this far north. Years ago it was not every year that the grapes reached maturity but now with global warming you sometimes even have to harvest earlier to avoid overripe fruit, especially if you want to get dry wines without bothersomely high alcohol.
Here riesling is king, although some really good spätburgunders are made in Assmanshausen, farthest west, where the Rhine turns north again.
The Rheingau wines are known for their minerality and high acidity.
2023 was a challenging year that separates the wheat from the chaff according to the producers we met. Hard and fast work was required during the harvest, but if you were prepared to do the work, you were rewarded for it with high qualities even if the volume was much lower than usual.
Jakob Jung, Erbach am Rhein
Erbach is a small, quiet and picturesque village, just over ten kilometres upstream along the Rhine from the more tourist-dense Rüdesheim. Here, everyone is so happy to see visitors that the mayor writes personal letters to any speeders caught by the speed cameras on the R42, opening with Sehr geehrte Herr…
Alexander Jung, who in 2008 took over the Jakob Jung family winery in the middle of the village, is equally likeable, if a little more forward-leaning. That Alexander has worked in South Africa can be seen in the fact that all the wines have screwcaps. He says: “Since we started with screw caps, our winemaking has changed. We let the wines develop a little longer before bottling them and the screw cap allows us to use less sulphur, something that I am convinced has raised the quality of our wines”.
Alexander’s wines are good right out of the starting blocks and have a lovely balance with a typical house style that you recognize from Gutswein to GG. The wines are complex but not complicated, drinkability in focus.
About 2023, Alexander says: “We have never previously worked so hard during the harvest, we tripled the number of hands for the harvest and the selection was tougher than ever.” When asked about the quality of this challenging year, he answers: “A challenging vintage does not mean that we cannot make great wines, we simply work harder and smarter. I have never been as happy with my entire collection as in 2023, the wines are so pure and fresh!” Systembolaget (the Swedish monopoly retailer) seems to agree and Weingut Jakob Jung won a tender for 16,000 bottles over three years for 2023 Riesling Erbacher Michelmark Erste Lage. For such a relatively small-scale producer, this means the entire production from that vineyard. Buy it and try it yourself. You will buy again! Also look out for Siegelsberg, a GG at the bargain price of €29.90.
Weingut Leitz, Rüdesheim am Rhein/Geisenheim
Johannes Leitz is a super entrepreneur and a worthy ambassador for German wines worldwide. He doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone and helps anyone who asks him whether it’s finding a US importer or a trainee spot for someone’s son. When he took over the family property they had 2.5 hectares, today the official figure according to VDP is 111 ha and I wonder if that is enough.
To achieve such great success you have to be brave and innovative and that is a good description of Johannes who has also achieved great success for his non-alcoholic wines in the Eins Zwei Zero series all over the world, especially in the USA. Johannes wants to think of his company a bit like Volkswagen, he has a wine for everyone. He has a Skoda that he sells at the discount chain Aldi, so that everyone can afford a good wine. He has Eins Zwei Dry, riesling’s Beetle, a car anyone can drive, sorry, a wine anyone can drink comfortably. He has an Audi, Magic Mountain, premium wine under the super premium segment and in Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg he grows his Porsche.
In Rüdesheim, Leitz has its very best locations, the so-called mountain plots. The very highest ranked vineyard in the Rheingau is precisely Berg Schlossberg, where Leitz and Georg Breuer, among others, have vineyards. These two producers have very different styles and wine philosophies, feel free to try them yourself if you get the chance!
Johannes says: “My wines are for drinking, not for thinking”. Drinking pleasure is the focus and you should be willing and able to buy another bottle. Therefore, they are priced in a different way than most other GG wines (Grosses Gewächs), not least in Sweden. Johannes says: “Just like for Volkswagen, it’s not the top models that put food on the table, Skoda allows them to pay for the manual labour in a Porsche and still sell it at a price that more people can afford. If the consumers who buy their wines at Aldi discover that this was really good, they might next time climb the quality ladder. It is exactly the same in Sweden, where more and more people are now going from Eins Zwei Dry to Magic Mountain wine school for the consumer with clear steps. I think that also benefits my colleagues in the VDP.”
Regarding the challenges of 2023, Johannes says: “2023 is a vintage that was different in different parts of Germany and also in different parts of the Rheingau. We have 18 hectares of steep vineyard sites in Rüdesheim but we have vineyards in all parts of the Rheingau so we can focus resources to the place that needs it most at any given time. The harvest in Rüdesheim was three weeks earlier than normal and we are very satisfied with what we have in the barrels”.
The GG wines are still in the barrels and will only be released in 2025, but you can already buy the second wine from Mountain Series, Magic Mountain riesling 2023. Because Johannes had a big birthday party when we were there, we never had time for a formal tasting of the entire 2023 collection, but it is hardly necessary, the wines are as always full of drinking pleasure. It was a fantastic party in any case, EVERYONE was there and it was more than EIN Prosit an der Gemütlichkeit!
Read the next episode in the series here: Nahe.
Read the previous section here: Introduction.
