Günther Steinmetz

The house sits in Brauneberg, in the Middle Mosel, and is more than a hundred and twenty years old. The first to break with custom was Stefan Steinmetz's grandfather: he was among the first in the village to bottle under his own name rather than sell the wine in bulk.

His father, Günther, took over in 1958 and was the one who built the reputation for quality the estate has today. Stefan, the fourth generation, came in as cellar and vineyard manager in 2000, aged twenty-two.

There are some thirteen hectares, widely scattered: they stretch across about twenty kilometres in order to sit in the sites that matter —Brauneberger Juffer, Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, Wehlener Sonnenuhr, Dhroner Hofberg, Mülheimer Sonnenlay, Kestener Paulinshofberg— all of them classified as Grosse Lage.

What they call natural viticulture is concrete: no fertilisers, no herbicides and no insecticides, with yield control and hand harvesting and sorting. And a declared preference when buying parcels: old, ungrafted Riesling.