Rudesheim, Germany - April 19 - Tuesday

Rudesheim is located in the Rheingau region and is the area’s center of wine making. This was a beautiful little town, but we had a wine tour so did not get to spend any time in the city itself.

The winery that we visited was called Schloss Johannisberg. It was originally a convent and was hit in the war, so has been rebuilt. The story is that this area was not bombed because there was nothing being manufactured here and there were no military installations. But one day, in the middle of the day, the bombers were coming down the river to bomb Manheim where there was a lot of industry. The story is that one of the bombers was losing altitude and they told him to either turn back or drop the bombs early to reduce his weight. So, not to waste good bombs in the Rhine River, all he saw was this winery and dropped them here.

The wine cellars go all through the winery under ground and the wine in them was not hurt. They have wine here back to the 1400’s. When a bottle reaches 25-30 years old they will taste it and then recork it. We were told that the one from the 1400’s does not taste good at all, but they are keeping it for history, not to sell.

The gentleman that was our guide gave us a very comprehensive tour, explaining how they prune the vines and how they collect the grapes. He was very knowledgeable about the wine making business. In this winery they only make white Riesling wine. They vary from very sweet to dry. We tasted four wines: 2014er Berglagen Riesling – trocken, 2014er Taunusquarzit Riesling – feinherb, 2014er Rotlack - Kabinett – feinherb, 2014er Grunlack – Spatlese. The first two were drier and were bottled by G.H. von Mumm – Johannisberg and the last two were sweet and bottled by Schloss Johannisberg. Schloss Johannisberg now owns Mumm and they produce their grapes together, but bottle under their own names.

These first few pictures are of the outside of the winery as we drove up.

These pictures are of the vineyards and the view that you have from up there looking down at the river and the town.

One of these pictures is of a statue of a man with grapes in his hand and the other is another view from in the winery. The story about the statue is the following. Every year the winery would have to take a sample of their grapes to the bishop to be approved as ready to pick. This journey usually takes one week. One year something happened and the man took four weeks. Because he was late many of the grapes rotted on the vine. They picked the good ones, but it made a small amount of wine. So, afraid to tell the bishop that they only had this small amount they thought they would also pick the rotted grapes and see what happened. Well, when they tasted the wine from the rotten grapes they found it to be exceptional. So, now they let the grapes go longer on the vine to get the better wine, and they have this statue here.

We will stay here in Rudesheim tonight and then go down the Middle Rhine tomorrow morning to see the castles. We will then dock in Koblenz, Germany where we will tour another castle.