O S Winery

After a pleasant stay in Bad Sobernheim, I took a short trip across the Nahe and up to Meddersheim to visit Weingut Hexamer. The young proprietors were out delivering wine but the senior Hexamer was kind enough to give me a tour and taste some wines. There is the usual collection of stainless tanks in a variety sizes, but there is an impressive arched-topped stone stairway that leads steeply down to the equally beautiful deep cellar where the stuck and doppelstuck (1200L, 2400L) are stored.
The very attractive tasting room looks out onto the cobbled street and has some nice design feature. The complete selection of wines is quite large, but if one sticks to Riesling there are 7 '09s, 5-6'08, and a couple of '07s. These are almost all from either Meddersheimer Grafenberg or Schossbockelheimer In Den Felsen. The basic Trocken Riesling Schlosslossbockelheimer In Den Felsen '08 (8.5 euros) is racy and refreshing. The Grafenberg Kabinett '09 (8 euros) has classic Nahe minerality and tremendous grip with a modern 7% RS. Lobster salad would have been nice. A very stylish wine at an amazingly low price. The Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg Spatlese '07 (11.8 euros) has 9% RS balanced by mouthwatering acidity and low alcohol (7.5%). Get out the ripe peaches. I had this wine in an earlier vintage ('01) and was just as impressed then as I am now by the '09.

I must have had a great time becauce when I was finished I decided it was timeto eat. This is never a problem in Germany and definately not in Meddersheim, I stumbled into Weinfass Meddersheim, a wonderful new bistro started up by a talented young chef from Mannheim. Schnitzel, pommes and Weissbeir: perfect.

 

Bad Sodernheim

Bad Sodernheim is the lovely town just upstream from Oberhausen where I stopped for weiss beer and schnitzel and spent the night at the Hotel Ratshof with seating outside on the edge of the beautiful town square. My room on the other side looked out an interesting complex of houses with a 3 story chicken house(8 meters high) at the end. There was, of course the usual offering of various breads, yogurt cereals eggs, fruit ad juice for breakfast.

Helmut Donnhoff and his family are the proprietors of one of the world's great wine estates. Nestled amongst the bucolic hills of the Nahe Valley in the little town of Oberhausen is Weingut Donnhoff, an exquisite winery, above and below ground, producing an armada of amazing wines. Pinot gris, pinot blanc, Rieslings without number and more. I arrived for the last day of a 3 day '09 release event, tasted my way slowly around the various tables, pausing for
fresh baked pizza, the oven having arrived on site on an artfully designed little trailer. While I waited for the pizza I had a man/dog interchange with the gorgeous English setter in the photo album. Eventually I managed to get the younger Donnhoff, Cornelius, to show me around the cellar. It's full of new and old stuck and doppelstuck (1200 L and 2400 L) and lots of equally sized stainless steel. A beautifully compact and well organized cellar. Their wines are so good that descriptions could not adequately communicate the effect they will have on you. Once again, rush down and buy some. The town of Oberhausen is on the right bank of the Nahe and tied to the left bank by a beautiful arched bridge, All in the shadow of Schlossbockerheimer and the famous Kupfergrube vineyard. The Schloss was, for nearly a hundred years,
the Staatsweingut for the Nahe, and it produced wines at the highest level that were highly sought after.

The ride down the Rheingau from Eltville to Rudesheim involves a number of towns: Erbach, Hattenheim, Winkel, Osterich and of course Geisenheim, home of the elite university program in oenologiy and viticulture. There is a no schedule needed to ferry across the Rhein to Bingen with two or three boats running so there 's no wait. Very Scenic. The anticipation of visiting Donnhoff was much stronger than any desire to indulge in any casual tourism so I simply
rode as fast as I could to through several more towns and villages to Oberhausen on the Nahe. Check out the Rhein crossing album: sign in, then- 1) Profile, 2)Library, 3) photo album

Kiedricher Grafenberg is primarily owned by Weingut Robert Weil and is one of the great vineyards of the Rheingau( rheingau www.edenwines.co.uk ) I tasted a full range of dry and off-dry wines from R Weil. They were uniformly impressive, wines with highly defined flavors carried on a structure as strong and supple as a danceur's spine. So rush right out and get a bottle of Weil Kabinett or Trocken (and a bottle of Ulysses). The tasting room at Weil is another distinctive example of great design German-style.

I didn't go to Kloster Eberbach, the Staatsweingut which is just upslope from Kiedrich another km or so but I will next year. Don't miss the other photos at the photo albums button on the Library pull-down in Profile.

Just another sunny day at Kiedricher Grafenberg

David Rayer (Dahveed Rahyeah) helps with the Pinot Noir at Keller which is stellar. Klaus-peter Keller and Julia both did stages in their training at premier Burgundy estates. M. Rayer has a very informative blog moselfinewines.com
(which is interesting for a French guy). I was too shy to take pictures of the
Kellers who were quite occupied tending to their many guests, but I urge you to go to their website: keller-wein.de, check out the pictures so you can see how young these two great winemakers are and then click on the English pdf on the right side of the home page for their story and a first rate rave by a very good UK writer.

This is the courtyard to Weingut Keller, the starting point for an extraordinary tasting. The vineyards are here in Florsheim-Dalsheim and in neighboring Westhofen, NW of Worms, in the southern Rheinhessen.

The cars were lining up all day, Jun 3, at Weingut Keller's release event. It's a dynamic tasting with distinctive separate tasting locations to match the distinct different groups of wines. The wines are dramatic and precise. The 2 wine makers Klaus-Peter Keller and his wife Julia Keller preside over 16 hectares of vineyard, a 16,000 case winery, production, marketing and sales of their sensational wines, and their young family as well.

How old do you think Herr Wolfgang Schon is. After biking 20 km with him from Nackenheim to Gundesblum at a steady 30-35km (it's fairly flat) and rotating the lead ever few Km I'm thinking about maybe 50 something. This hotshot is 71 and claims to drink a bottle of Sylvaner a day
a day. Fast riding and wine- the secret to longevity.

This is the first night in Germany Jun 2 at Pizzaria Pisa in Wallau where my new friend Jason lives southeast of Wiesbaden and northeast of Hochheim . The beer is Bitburger. Great pizza. I'm ready for a long ride up the Rhein and back.