Prowein 2019: Visiting Wineries of Mittelrhein- Weingut Matthias Müller

Mittelrhein is a small wine producing region located between Koblenz and Rheingau, and obviously by the river Rheine. It’s known for its scenic route, what with the Rheine meandering at a few places with residences and vineyards on both sides on small hills, making them picture post-card classics. Known for its steep vineyards of black slate like in Mosel, it is the second smallest appellation in Germany with only around 500 hA of vineyards. One of the 80 producers is Matthias Müller whose owner Matthias Müller’s family has been living in the same house for 300 years. I had visited it earlier in 2015 and it brought back good memories of a fine tasting and visit.

Weingut Matthias Müller

Matthias renovated his boutique winery in 2012, the same year as he was chosen as the ‘Winemaker of the Year’ by Gault Millau magazine and famous wine guide of Germany. It has been constructed in a chic and modern style with excellent tasting room and event room and colourful construction making it appear very cheerful and pleasant too.

‘I wanted to expand our winery. We also wanted to increase the wine tourism and wanted more events to take place in our winery and have more people visit our winery. So we went for the expansion and refurbishing at a cost of €1-1.5 million. It has really paid off. We have several groups visiting now and have tastings and parties around wine,’ says Matthias. What also helped Matthias was that the winery became a member of the VDP, the highly prestigious organisation with about 200 members in 2007 and the membership through invitation only has only increased visitors.

Amongst several interesting turns and bends, Rhine has one known as Bopparder Hamm. It is an excellent hilly area with steep slopes of slate, making it a winemaker’s delight to grow high quality grapes. However, tending to vines and harvesting at such steep slopes is an onerous task. In fact, several vineyards have been abandoned over the years and are lying unused; an area known to have wine production by the Romans around 1500 years ago and once boasting of 2000 hAs of vine surface.

Bopparder Hamm has several other vineyards in and around it- Fässerlay, Mandelstein, Feuerlay, Ohlenberg  and Engelstein (Angel stone) are a few of them close to the village Spay (pronounced as Shpaa-ee) and the winery names wines after the vineyards. About 70% of the 100,000 to 120,000 bottles (in a good year) produced annually are Riesling; 15% are Mueller Thurgau, a variety that had gone out-of-fashion but is making a come-back because the youth loves it. Balance is Pinot family- Pinot Noir and Blanco (Spätburgunder and Weissburgunder). Last year Matthias also planted Red Riesling- the red variant of the popular grape that is being increasingly grown these days in this region and in fact in other parts of Germany as well.

The winery uses only organic compost and no herbicides or pesticides are used. Fermentation is with natural sugar and no sugar is added.

Wines are of amazing quality and priced generally at €7-15 and are excellent value for money. It’s a pity there is an opportunity to drink such high class wines of Grand Cru and Premier Cru levels but the concept has not yet been promoted by them in the international markets. Only about 5% of wines are exported. But their popularity has been increasing within the country.

Matthias says, ‘our wines were generally sold and consumed within 30 kms of our village Spay. Now we are selling mostly between 30-100 kms from Spay. But they are popular everywhere from Berlin to Baden. We have regular customers who come here and happily pick up a few cases every time they come. In fact, 70% of the sales are from our Vinothek (wine shop) only.’ It reminds one of the famous tagline for a cigarette commercial decades ago, ‘I'd walk a mile for a Camel!’

We tasted 8 wines- Rieslings all. All were excellent to outstanding quality. They varied in style- from dry to off dry and sweet, ending with an Icewine which is not feasible to produce every year because it does not get cold enough to -7 °C, the maximum temperature allowed to pick the berries for Icewein. The 2002 we were poured was an excellent dessert wine with a fabulous balance between sugar at 90gms (surprisingly low for Icewine) and acid at 9.2 gms.

Visiting the winery - a UNESCO World Heritage-listed region can get you to taste some hidden gems-some of the best Rieslings. When you do visit, pick up as many bottles as you can. You will love the visit and the tasting; one may also visit a few other boutique wineries in the nearby town of Bacharach which is written about a lot for its excellent quality and pqr and I visited too. Being slightly off the beaten path, the wines are still affordable.

Details to contact:

Weingut Matthias Müller
Contact: Johannes Müller
Mainzer Str. 45, 56322 Spay
Phone:+049 2628 8741
www.weingut-matthiasmueller.de
info@weingut-matthiasmueller.de

Subhash Arora

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