“The last Princess von Metternich called this cellar ‘The Cathedral of Riesling,’” my guide said. It was easy to see why. The gravel on the floor, strewn there to capture humidity, crunched underfoot, as though the wines in the ancient casks were applauding our every step. 
The cellar was really nothing special, as far as European castle wine cellars go, though it was artfully lit to suggest the cathedral analogy, the light reflecting through the flutes of sparkling Riesling sekt we carried as votives. Nothing special, that is, except for its location, at Schloss Johannisberg in Germany’s Rheingau region.
A visit to Schloss Johannisberg is a necessary pilgrimage for any Riesling lover. Not because of the wines, though they are great, but because of the history, and the geography. The 50th parallel bisects the vineyards, marking Europe’s northernmost wine region.
The estate, above the small town of the same name where the Rhine flows east-to-west for a short stretch, combines religious, diplomatic, and viticultural history. The schloss, or castle, began as a monastery built in the early 12th century, though more recent excavations found Romanesque attributes that have been featured in the current restoration. The castle itself was finished in 1728, but destroyed in World War II by an errant Allied bomb. The estate, which is now about 80 acres, was planted to Riesling in the 1740s by the Prince of Fulda. This nobleman, or at least his tardy messenger, was responsible for German wine as we know it - one year, when the official decree to begin harvest arrived late, the nervous vineyard workers were forced to make wine from moldy grapes, and botrytis, or noble rot, was discovered. This was the beginning of spätlese, auslese and trockenbeerenauslese, the progressively sweet wines mimicked the world over as late harvest.
Schloss Johannisberg changed hands several times during the Napoleonic Wars, eventually coming under control of the Hapsburgs. The Emperor of Austria awarded it to Prince von Metternich for his work at the Congress of Vienna, which restored European order after Napoleon’s defeat. The estate remained in the Metternich family until the last prince passed away two years ago.
My guide on this tour was Christian Witte, the estate’s young and ambitious managing director. He spoke brashly of restoring Schloss Johannisberg’s wines to the status they enjoyed before the First World War, when they were priced comparably to the first growths of Bordeaux.
The company actually has two wineries, the Schloss and G.H. von Mumm, located nearby. The Mumm label (not to be confused with the better-known Champagne house) produces red wines and trockens, the trendy dry style of white wines. The Schloss sticks to the traditional styled wines.
“Tradition is not praying to the ashes, it is handing over the fire,” Witte said, practicing his marketing mantra. He acknowledged that rebuilding the estate’s reputation will be difficult given the consumer’s difficulty in deciphering Riesling in general and German wines in particular.
“Riesling is a wine-lover’s dream, but it is a marketing disaster,” he said. “Why do we have so many styles? Because we can! With no other grape variety can you do that!”
To prove his point, Witte offered a dizzying array of wines, all showing tremendous Riesling character but with significant differences in sweetness and fruit expression. Trying to keep up, my notes are a jumble of references to “red label,” “green label,” or silver, “long cap” and “erstes gewächs,” one of Germany’s attempts to emulate the first growth concept. These are interspersed with adjectives such as “zesty” and “mineral,” plus frequent superlatives.
Finally, I put my pen down and concentrated on the wines. Tradition, ambition, castles and cathedrals faded from my mind as I stared into the fiery glint of Riesling in my glass.
Photos by Dave McIntyre: Schloss Johannisberg; the 50th Parallel; Christian Witte in the Cathedral of Riesling.
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