Description

The legendary Schloss Johannisberg is steeped in history. The vineyards were planted on the orders of the Roman Emperor Charlemagne. Planted solely with Riesling grapes in 1720, Schloss Johannisberg was the world’s first Riesling Estate and plays a significant part in wine history. It was here in 1775 that the Spätlese quality was discovered using late picked grapes suffering from “noble rot”. Following this discovery, in 1787 the estate gave Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese to the wine world. Schloss Johannisberg is a single vineyard designation in its own right and one of a handful of German vineyards that does not have to display a village name on the label.

The vineyards consist of a loam-loess topsoil over Taunus quartzite. The stony, gravelly soil is great at retaining the daytime temperatures and acts as a temperature buffer.

The wines of Schloss Johannisberg have a colour coding system, the Red Seal or Rotlack designates a Kabinett wine, whilst the yellow seal or Gelblack, for example, designates a QbA – the various classifications were used as the basis for the new German wine classification of 1971.