RÖTTGEN, Winningen | VDP.GROSSE LAGE®




The steep vineyard terraces of the VDP.GROSSE LAGE® RÖTTGEN rise up from the banks of the Moselle like a natural wonder. With gradients of up to 170 %, the RÖTTGEN near Winningen is one of the steepest vineyards in Germany. The slate was formed in the sea under high pressure and has a blue colour. In our hot microclimate, however, the iron content of the rock oxidizes quite quickly. After a short time, it turns its typical yellow-brown colour. When the rock is exposed to the sun for a particularly long time, petroleum can even bake out of the rock and it then takes on a blue shimmer. Due to its steepness, the rock of RÖTTGEN was impossible to cultivate until modern times. As the viticultural pioneer Johan Philipp Bronner (1792-1864) so beautifully wrote, it not until after the German Campaign in the 1820s, that it was “...blasted with gunpowder and worked by many helping hands in such a way that the whole thing now comprises an excellent vineyard, which was wrested from nature by art and human hands. To the passing traveller it seems incomprehensible how these individual parcels that are scattered between cliffs and often not connected at all, can be cultivated, or provided with fertilizer and the like. Since they do not seem to be connected at all, only art has conquered all obstacles of nature...” The terraces are braced by dry stone walls and rise from 80 to 180 metres above sea level and face south-southeast.


Layer profile

Growing AreaMosel-Saar-Ruwer
Graded area28,05 acres
Graded vinesRiesling
VDP.Growers working in this layerHeymann-Löwenstein | Zum Weingut


Geological data

AlignmentSSO
Elevation80-180m ü. N. N.
Slope100-170%
Groundblauer und gelb-braune changierende Schiefer

Meteorologic Data