There are many explanations for the often-cited ‘German wine miracle’ of the 1980s. One of them begins here, in Winkel in the Rheingau. It began when a lord of the manor and winemaker, with a family history stretching back a thousand years, opened his idyllically situated estate and had local specialities – which had been rediscovered – served alongside the estate’s own Rieslings. ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ may well have flashed through the minds of many a visitor: ‘I, too, am in Arcadia’. And this Arcadia was not in France or Italy, but literally on their own doorstep. It felt as though an entire generation discovered, in this very place, the harmony between landscape, culture, German wine and regional cuisine. And Count Matuschka-Greiffenclau, the ‘Wine Count’, as he was often called, was the tireless promoter of this connection, in Wiesbaden just as much as in Tokyo or New York.
A bankruptcy with a happy ending
More than 25 years have now passed since the Count’s tragic death. Today, Schloss Vollrads is owned by the Nassauische Sparkasse (Naspa) as a limited liability company (GmbH), and operations are divided between two companies: one handles the management of the vineyard, whilst the other manages the estate, events and the restaurant. The Sparkasse did not choose this role – it simply fell into its lap. As the principal creditor, it had initiated bankruptcy proceedings against the Count the day before his death due to his excessive debt and subsequently sought a buyer for the estate and the wine-growing business, to no avail. In 1999, Naspa finally decided to continue running the business itself. Ultimately, estate director Ralf Bengel is convinced that this arrangement was “a stroke of luck”.
Following the Count’s death, there was considerable pressure from the region – particularly from the Rheingau Winegrowers’ Association – to preserve the business as a whole. Presumably also because it was under pressure due to public accusations, the bank had formed an advisory board at the beginning of 1998 comprising Richard Nägler, Vice-President of the Rheingau Winegrowers’ Association, Wilhelm Weil from the winery of the same name in Kiedrich, and Dr Rowald Hepp from the Staatlicher Hofkeller in Würzburg, to manage the day-to-day operations at Schloss Vollrads. The advisory board and the bank cooperated well – Managing Director Anton Mauerer knew that, given Naspa’s tarnished reputation, the venture could not be allowed to fail. In August 1998, the insolvency proceedings were concluded and a managing director was sought. As no suitable external candidate could be found, the choice fell on Rowald Hepp, the former head of the Hessian State Wineries. On 1 July 1999, he officially took up his post as managing director of Schloss Vollrads GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nassauische Sparkasse.
A fresh start under Rowald Hepp
Without Rowald Hepp, Schloss Vollrads would not be where it is today. He carefully stabilised production and brought the business out of the red. As early as autumn 2000, Gault Millau noted that it was “pure joy” to “smell and taste how Schloss Vollrads is on the up”. For Hepp, it is no easy task, as the winery must be self-sustaining. A grant from Naspa – whose shareholders are the district and the towns – would constitute an impermissible subsidy. Instead, the profits remain within the company and finance the gradual refurbishment of the estate. To this day, the bank has kept itself out of the day-to-day running of the business. As a board member once put it: “As long as Vollrads doesn’t tell the board how to conduct banking business, we won’t tell Vollrads how to make wine.”
For a brief period only, there was another ‘dip’ in the success story of the ‘new’ Schloss Vollrads. In 2011, the wine marking the 800th anniversary of the wine contract was vinified using methods that Rowald Hepp had gleaned from old cellar records: with the grapes, including the stems, left to rest for a long time on the must before spontaneous fermentation, followed by ageing in wood. This was the complete opposite of everything held sacred by cellar master Ralph Herke, whose philosophy was shaped by stainless steel and cooling technology. In 2013, he stepped down – and finding a successor proved difficult. Criticism was once again swift and unrelenting: ‘In 2015, we expect more top-quality wines,’ stated Gault Millau. In autumn 2016, the editor – unaware of the situation – then scathingly remarked on “Rheingau grandeur, tamed by the Sparkasse culture of the Federal Republic of Germany”. With Jochen Bug as cellar master since 2017, Schloss Vollrads returned to calmer waters and the quality took another leap forward.
Successor Ralf Bengel
Meanwhile, however, Rowald Hepp was giving thought to his succession. For over a year, he held discussions with Ralf Bengel, who, like himself, had once worked at the Hessian State Wineries. Bengel was not a native of the Rheingau, but it had nevertheless become a second home to him since 1992. After all, his father – a vine grafting specialist and member of a winegrowers’ co-operative in Heilbronn – was a ‘Geisenheimer’; it was thanks to his father’s contacts that his son secured an apprenticeship in Geisenheim, followed by a degree in viticulture and oenology at the research institute. After working at Gut Nägelsförst in Baden and the Köhler-Weidmann winery in Rheinhessen, he joined Count Kanitz in Lorch in the Rheingau in 1992. His most important task was the transition to organic farming (which took place in 1994) – a pioneering feat. For three years, he sat on the board of the Rheingau Winegrowers’ Association alongside Count Matuschka-Greiffenclau. In 2002, the post of operations manager at the State Wineries in Assmannshausen became vacant and Bengel took over.
Eventually, Bengel became responsible for all wine production at Eberbach Abbey. His task: planning and implementing the construction of the new cellar in Steinberg. This was not only technically highly demanding, but also the subject of fierce media controversy. Construction began in 2006 and the facility was inaugurated in 2008. Bengel had shown that he was the man for big tasks, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. With some persistence, Hepp managed to recruit Ralf Bengel for Schloss Vollrads. In 2018, he initially joined the team as Hepp’s deputy and spent three years being brought up to speed on all aspects of the business before taking over from him as managing director in 2021. He is set to build on Hepp’s approach: delivering reliability at the high end.
The last private castle in the Rheingau
Knowledge really does help in this place, because Schloss Vollrads is far more than just a winery. Karl Simrock once called it ‘the last surviving private castle in the Rheingau’ and described its owners, the Barons von Greiffenclau, as the only ‘of all the Rheingau families’ still in its prime. According to legend, the family is said to have served as ministerials as far back as the time of Charlemagne; the name Greiffenclau has been documented since 1097. As the ‘Lords of Winkel’, they resided in the nearby ‘Graues Haus’ (Grey House), arguably the oldest secular stone building in Germany. A contract from 1211 for three ‘Stückfässer’ of wine from the family’s estate is considered the world’s oldest wine invoice – only the Antinori family in Florence has an even older winemaking tradition. Due to the risk of flooding and marauding robber barons, the von Greiffenclau family moved in 1320 to a purpose-built tower castle above Winkel – which remains the landmark of Schloss Vollrads to this day.
Appointed to the rank of Imperial Baron in 1664, the importance of this Rheingau noble family grew steadily within the Old Empire: prince-bishops in Würzburg, electors in Mainz and Trier, and even an Archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire were descended from their line. In keeping with their status, the present-day two-winged manor house was built opposite the residential tower in 1684, with the adjoining farm buildings added in 1700. As early as 1693, special wines were being sold beyond the region as ‘Gewegse’ – the precursors to today’s ‘Große Gewächse’. This golden age also saw the construction of the famous ‘Cabinet Cellar’, as evidenced by an invoice to the master mason dated 1716. A ‘Cabinet’, according to the definition in a contemporary encyclopaedia, was a ‘small and secret room (…), in which one studies, writes and keeps the most precious items’. This is where the estate’s finest wines were stored – the earliest known selection of top wines in Germany, predating even the construction of the Cabinet Cellar at Eberbach Abbey. Records from 1728 document the sale of cask wines from the 1727 vintage – Schloss Vollrads was also among the pioneers in the sale of vintage wines.
Return to the Rheingau
However, by the time Goethe passed Schloss Vollrads in September 1814 during his now-famous walk through the Rheingau, this splendour was a thing of the past. The ‘Greiffenclau zu Vollrads’ line had long since ceased to reside in the Rheingau. The gardens had ‘grown wild’, and the halls in the castle were ‘not ravaged, but desolate’. This neglect is undoubtedly the reason why, in the first major French and English wine books from the first half of the 19th century, whilst Rheingau estates such as Schloss Johannisberg and Kloster Eberbach were celebrated, Schloss Vollrads was not mentioned at all, and the vineyards were rated, at best, as second-class on the contemporary Dahlen map, which was based on wine selling prices.
This only changed when the male line died out and the last female descendant, Baroness Sophie, married the Silesian Count Hugo von Matuschka, and the family moved back to the Rheingau around 1860. Their son, Guido, in turn, married Clara von Oppenheim from the Cologne banking family. She had taken early payment of her inheritance and invested it: in the castle, to which two towers and an additional storey were added, and in viticulture. Soon, the wines of Schloss Vollrads were among the most sought-after and expensive in the German Empire. It was with her son that the family’s involvement in wine policy began. In 1924, Richard Graf Matuschka-Greiffenclau took over the Department of Viticulture and Agriculture at the Koblenz Regional Council and became President of the Rheingau Winegrowers’ Association in 1925. In 1948, having been sidelined by the Nazis from 1933 onwards, he became the first post-war President of the German Winegrowers’ Association.
A tragic end
Count Erwein, who took over the estate in 1975 following the death of his paternal grandfather, followed in his footsteps: as President of the Association of German Prädikat Wine Estates (VDP) from 1978 to 1990 and, from 1990, also as President of the Rheingau Winegrowers’ Association, he became ‘Germany’s best-known winemaker’ (Das Handelsblatt). His suicide marked the end of Schloss Vollrads’ connection with the Matuschka-Greiffenclau family – and yet, through their legacy, it remains ever-present. Almost every room in the castle and tower tells of its thousand-year history: from a medieval tournament saddle belonging to the family to fashion magazines from the 1930s, from old children’s toys to Count Erwein’s collection of cookery books. Goethe had found at Vollrads ‘the traces of an ancient family’ that ‘has abolished itself’ – an experience that today’s visitors also share. However, the estate is not ‘completely stripped of its nobility’, as the poet writes: thanks to its new owners, Vollrads Castle is not an (investment) ruin, but remains true to the legacy of its former owners. That is why the estate is not intended to be a museum, but to remain a living space and be used for events.
Genetic pool vineyard for Riesling
Ralf Bengel is now working to safeguard this heritage for the future. This begins in the vineyard – just as he once did for Count Kanitz, his mission is to convert the estate to organic farming. This is no small task, as Schloss Vollrads is not a small vineyard. As early as 1866, the estate was bottling wines not only from the ‘Schlosslage’ itself but also from the older Winkel vineyards of Plankner and Opferberg. Since the Wine Act of 1971, Schloss Vollrads has been a recognised local designation, which is why wine from the Schloss Vollrads vineyard may be labelled simply as ‘Schloss Vollrads’ without specifying the locality of Winkel. Of these 33.1 hectares, 13.4 and 3.15 hectares respectively in the Schlossberg and Greiffenberg vineyards are classified as ‘Große Lage’ (Grand Cru). The estate now comprises a total of 50 hectares directly surrounding the castle – a further 13 hectares lie closer to the Rhine, such as in the Jesuitengarten in Winkel. In 2011, a further 17 hectares were leased from the Heinrich Jung winery in Geisenheim (meaning there were briefly two production sites), but the lease was terminated in 2020 because the seventy-year-old owner was no longer willing to make the transition to organic farming. At Schloss Vollrads, in any case, the first certified organic wines went on sale in 2023.
After all, Ralf Bengel only has to focus on one grape variety: the Schloss Vollrads vineyards are 100 per cent planted with Riesling. This was not always the case: records from 1866 also mention Ruländer, from which two casks were produced. In the second half of the 20th century, the vineyard area at Schloss Vollrads temporarily comprised 5 per cent Müller-Thurgau, and for a few years also one per cent of the Geisenheim-bred Ehrenfelser variety. Pinot Noir, on the other hand, was never an option, not even for Ralf Bengel: “There simply aren’t any suitable plots here.” His primary concern in the vineyard is, rather, the future of Riesling in the face of the climate crisis. For decades, the winery had maintained its own ‘grafting garden’ for vine grafting at Schloss Vollrads; since 2015, the winery has, in collaboration with Geisenheim University, established a biodiversity vineyard in which 49 different Riesling clones have been planted: alongside the local classics, these even include varieties from Alsace and Australia. This will reveal how this noble German grape variety can best meet the challenges of the future. To improve drought resistance, the old rootstock varieties 5 BB and SO4 are also being largely replaced with C 3309. The vines at Schloss Vollrads reach an average age of a good 40 years; under normal circumstances, therefore, a good 2.5 per cent of the area would be replanted each year. Due to the precarious financial situation in the 1990s, there is some catching up to do here, and the proportion of new plantings today is more like 3 to 3.5 per cent.
A ‘Riesling cathedral’
Ralf Bengel’s second major project is the wine cellar. Since the early 18th century, this has been housed in the farm buildings at the rear of the castle’s west wing. This arrangement involves numerous compromises, such as with the grape reception area or the stainless-steel tanks, which are often rectangular due to space constraints. Yet over 400,000 bottles are produced here each year, which are exported to over 40 countries worldwide. In 2011, the first step towards separating the castle from the winery was taken with the construction of a new machinery hall outside the old farmyard.
In 2020, initial planning began for a new wine cellar – adapted to the terrain – complete with an energy centre, to be built beneath the paddocks at Vollradser Wäldchen. Construction of the energy-neutral building, costing a good 10 million and featuring its own access road, began in summer 2022; the topping-out ceremony took place on 7 September 2023, and the first harvest was processed here in 2024. Walking through the impressive building site with its load-bearing columns and five-metre-high walls, one cannot help but agree with Ralf Bengel’s description of it as the ‘Riesling Cathedral’. It will be a state-of-the-art winery facility with space for four large presses and gentle grape and must processing using the principle of gravity. For many builders, this was a cause for anxiety. Ralf Bengel remained calm: this was his second new build.
Two styles
The wines at Schloss Vollrads will therefore become even more precise in future, though their style will remain largely unchanged. Its vineyards are mostly situated at relatively high altitudes, yet are sheltered from northerly winds by the castle’s own small woodland and, thanks to the clay-loam content in the soil, are well protected against drought stress. Their slender profile, moderate alcohol content and pronounced acidity define their character. Since the introduction of the ‘Erste Gewächse’ classification, the estate has cultivated two distinct styles: crisp, fruit-driven wines from stainless steel and full-bodied, mineral-driven wines from oak barrels. According to Ralf Bengel, this represents a clear evolution since the 1990s, when everyone – even with dry Rieslings – focused solely on high must weights. Today, the target is 90 Oechsle, and the top wines are left to extract aromatic compounds – but also phenolics – for four days at four to five degrees before fermentation. However, these must be tamed through gentle oxidation. This usually takes place in Palatinate “Stückfässer” – in future, some of which will be made from wood sourced from the Vollradser Wäldchen, where four oak trees were felled for this purpose.
Fortunately, malolactic fermentation is no longer forced, but as Ralf Bengel puts it, ‘there’s no rule without an exception’: out of twenty barrels, one might occasionally undergo spontaneous malolactic fermentation, and in such cases, nature is allowed to take its course. Pure-culture yeasts are used, which have been selected from 59 yeast strains belonging to the estate itself. Charta wines, the Count’s great passion, are no longer bottled, and the old system of different capsule colours (white, white-silver, white-gold, etc.) has also been abandoned. Instead, since 2018, Schloss Vollrads has aligned itself more closely with the VDP’s quality pyramid, featuring estate wines, local wines, ‘Erste Lagen’ and ‘Große Lagen’. This has not been without its challenges. In 2018, for example, wines from the Mittelheimer Edelmann and Hattenheimer Engelmannsberg were bottled as ‘Erste Lagen’ – names that Vollrads had never previously publicised and which no customer understood. So, apart from possible exclusive bottlings for trade partners, it remained a one-off initiative. Ralf Bengel is convinced that Schloss Vollrads, much like a Bordeaux château, possesses a much stronger brand identity, meaning that the VDP’s Burgundy-inspired quality pyramid – which has also been incorporated into German wine law since 2021 – cannot simply be applied.
The wines
Despite this château parallel, Schloss Vollrads’ wine portfolio is now very diverse. At its core, the estate markets the ‘Sommer’, an entry-level Riesling that already reflects the estate’s style and is intended to be produced from its own grapes in the long term. This is complemented by the ‘Volratz’, a somewhat more rustic Versper wine. The fine, dry estate Riesling from northern vineyards not situated on the Rhine is cool and mineral, whilst the dry Riesling from Winkel, as a local wine, is floral and nutty with a clean profile. The Riesling Edition, democratically selected by the winery’s staff, is reminiscent of a Charta wine from days gone by with its light, subtly semi-dry character. More pronounced than the ‘Erste Lagen’ is the dry local wine ‘1716’, made from young vines at Schlossberg and Greiffenberg – a champion of value for money.
With the 2019 and 2020 Schlossberg GG and the 2018 Greiffenberg, the style shifts into a different realm: with a softer texture, greater density and a noticeable influence from oak barrels. The highlight of the dry wines, however, is without doubt the 1211, a single-barrel cuvée made from the finest grapes of the 2017 vintage sourced from the estate’s four Grand Cru vineyards: Schlossberg, Greiffenberg, Winkeler Hasensprung and Jesuitengarten. Very refined and clear, with a hint of petrol and great promise for the future. The fruity wines are classic in style, ranging from the delicate 2021 Kabinett from Winkel to the brilliant 2002 Eiswein. The latter comes from the treasure chamber in the tower of Vollrads Castle, established in 2005, where only noble sweet wines are stored in large bottles. Ralf Bengel and his team of 50 staff are also working to build a legacy for future generations.
Note
This article first appeared in a modified form in FINE – Das Weinmagazin 2/2023.
Image credits
Stefan Pegatzky / Time Tunnel Images
