Landmarks of Wine Culture

"We are open to new things, yet rooted in our origins," say Monika and Rainer Müller from the Max Müller I winery in Volkach.

Weingut am Stein is located on the steep sun-drenched slopes on the river Main. From the limestone vineyards soaring above Würzburg, winemaker Ludwig Knoll produces high-quality wines, in particular, Silvaner and the renowned Steinwein (stone wine).

A sense of tradition, a clear commitment to the spirit of the times and a love of detail characterize the winery and the wines of the Brennflecks. “Clear, simple and self-assured” describes the minimalist cubic building with its exposed concrete walls and the philosophy of the wines pressed there.

One is Germany's oldest charitable foundation that owns a wine estate; the other is one of Germany's oldest vineyards bearing a site-specific name and the two have been inextricably linked for centuries: the Bürgerspital zum Heiligen Geist estate and the Würzburger Stein vineyard.

'Vision Requires Space' proclaimed the 90 winegrowing families of Franken's oldest winegrowing cooperative. And through the World of Wine that they have created in the lower Franconian town of Sommerach, that vision has become a reality.

Probably no other place in Germany has done as much to preserve viticultural history as Lorsch Abbey. A countless number of communities within an area stretching from Baden in the south, Franken in the east, and Rheinhessen in the west are able to track their viticultural history up to the early Middle Ages - thanks to Lorsch Abbey.

The "Wine and Stone" experiential path in Heppenheim on the Bergstraße unites wine and art in a unique manner: the cultural history of wine is explained via works of art at stops along the circular route.

These grapevines are true veterans of viticultural history: More than 400 years old, the grapevines from the "Rhodter Rosengarten" have not only survived the centuries but still bear fruit every year, making it the oldest vineyard in perhaps the whole world, which is still stocked with its original grapevines.

Underneath a red roof, a true treasure of viticulture is hidden in the middle of the vineyards on the edge of the city of Bad Dürkheim: a two thousand year old wine press from Roman times. The wine press with its building is the only one of that kind between Southern Palatinate and the Mosel.

Here is the oldest grape wine in the world that is still liquid. The Historical Museum of Pfalz guards one of the biggest treasures of viticulture - wine from around 325 AD, preserved in a cylindrical glass bottle adorned with two dolphin-shaped handles.

It is unusual for an old winegrower's house to look like a classic modernist building, but that's exactly the case in Kindenheim. This is where the estate of the Kreutzenberger vintner family was built in 1929 – in what was then avant-garde Bauhaus style.

In this city, the first wine of high quality range was made within the region of Palatinate and this city shaped German wine politics to a large extent: there's hardly any other city in Germany which earns the label "Cradle of German Quality Wines" as much as Deidesheim.