A revival in the Rheingau

The vineyard is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to the middle of the 9th century. The winery itself began in the early 13th century and remained under the control of one family, the barons of Greiffenclau, through 29 generations.

But the wines went into sharp decline near the end of the 20th century, and in 1997 -- despondent, unable to reverse the decline, faced with mounting financial problems -- Erwein Graf Count Matuschka-Greiffenclau, the last in the family line of vintners, climbed a hill above the vineyards and killed himself.

The Schloss Vollrads winery has new owners now, and when I had lunch at Campanile recently with Rowald Hepp, the new managing director, it was clear from both the winemaking changes he described and -- more important -- the stellar quality of the 11 wines we sampled, that the winery is returning to its glory days.

The wines ranged from crisp, entry-level Rieslings at $14.99 a bottle to a rich, nectar-like Beerenauslese at $179.99 a half-bottle.

The renaissance of Schloss Vollrads comes at a time when a confluence of forces has made the vineyard’s best offerings -- Rieslings -- a highly desirable and marketable commodity.

Recent vintages in Germany have been outstanding, and Riesling has recently begun to win a much wider acceptance. Sales in this country were up more than 25% last year. Schloss Vollrads’ Rieslings from the 2003 vintage -- also said to be excellent -- suggest that the numbers will grow even more this year.

The Rheingau, home of Schloss Vollrads, is considered the country’s “finest wine land,” as Hugh Johnson writes in his World Atlas of Wine, and Schloss Vollrads’ 144 acres produce “some of Germany’s most noble wines.”

After the death of Count Matuschka-Greiffenclau, Schloss Vollrads fell into bankers’ hands, and two years later, the bankers hired Hepp. He moved quickly to reverse the dreary results of years of problematic decision-making. He cut yields by 40%, switched from machine harvesting to hand harvesting and ripped out all grape varietals but Riesling so he could “focus on what we do best.”

Hepp’s efforts have paid early dividends. Schloss Vollrads won critical acclaim for its 2001 and 2002 wines.

Hepp’s own family had owned a small vineyard when he was young, but it was steeply sloped, and after his father injured his leg, he couldn’t work it anymore. With memories of those difficult days still in mind, his parents were “horrified,” Hepp says, when he told them, at 16, that he’d decided to become a vintner.

He did it, he said, out of “curiosity. I was really surprised by the differences in the tastes of different wines from the time I started drinking them, when I was very young, and I wanted to know where these differences came from.”

Hepp’s excitement about the opportunity to again make great wine from Schloss Vollrads vineyard is as palpable as his timing is impeccable.

‘A great food wine’

“People are eating lighter foods now, and Riesling is the right match,” Hepp says. “The acid in Riesling gives it a fresh, crisp taste that brings out the flavors in food instead of dominating them. It’s why Riesling has always been known as a great food wine.”

Riesling’s rise in popularity in the U.S. is striking given that most Americans have long found all German wines either off-putting (because of the Liebfraumilch-driven image of them as sickly sweet) or intimidating (because their labels are virtually incomprehensible).

(Stripped to its absolute simplest, minimalist terms, the key is that wines labeled “QmP,” -- Qualitatswein mit Pradikat, quality wine with distinction -- rise in the ripeness of the grapes from Kabinett to Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese.)

But Rieslings are a discovery well worth making. After all, they’re low in alcohol -- “10% to 12.5% alcohol for most of ours,” Hepp says -- and generally less expensive than an equivalent quality Chardonnay.

Fortunately, German Rieslings are much easier to drink than their labels are to understand. To get a sense of Riesling’s versatility, Hepp and I decided to avoid the tried-and- true-cum-cliche -- Asian food, for which Rieslings are a well-known, ideal match. At Campanile, we started with the day’s special appetizer, a cauliflower soup.

We drank three Rieslings with it, all priced at $14.99 to $16.99 and ranging from trocken (dry) to halbtrocken (half-dry). The acid-sugar balance and the hints of green apple in the 2002 Riesling Kabinett halbtrocken proved a perfect complement to the soup.

We drank four other wines, including two $25.99 Spatlese, with grilled yellowtail and Campanile’s version of raita, a cucumber, mint and yogurt blend that almost served as a bridge between the fish and the wine. All these Rieslings had more color, a more pronounced, almost peach-like bouquet and, I thought, richer flavors than the earlier wines. Hepp said that was because their grapes had “three to six weeks more hang time.”

“The later you pick, the more time the grapes have to absorb the minerals from the soil,” he said.

Land of dessert wines

The climate and terroir of Schloss Vollrads, and its proximity to the Rhine River, make it especially well-suited to the production of rich dessert wines, made from grapes whose “noble rot,” or botrytis, is encouraged by the river mist. Dessert wines have long been among my favorites, and I’ve come to like those from Germany even more than the Sauternes that I first fell in love with.

Hepp expressed complete puzzlement over his predecessor’s decision to stop making those wines.

“From 1976 to 1998, no noble sweet wines,” he said, practically spluttering with indignation. “It was crazy. Crazy.”

Crazy indeed if my tasting of two of those wines is any indication. But then you might also have to be crazy to pay the asking price for the wines. The Beerenauslese (BA) is $179.99 for a half-bottle, the Eiswein $159.99 a half-bottle. But both were magnificent, with the BA almost more a honeyed syrup than a beverage -- a second dessert really, rather than a pairing with Campanile’s apple crisp. The Eiswein, not quite as thick and with -- for me -- a better acid-sugar balance, was my favorite wine of the day and a perfect partner for the crisp.

Both wines are in very limited production, though -- just in case you were thinking of taking out a second mortgage and picking up a couple of cases of each. Of Schloss Vollrads’ total annual production of 50,000 cases, only 100 are BA and only 50 are Eiswein. The winery’s Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) is even rarer (just 10 cases a year) -- and even more expensive ($299.99 a half-bottle).

Unfortunately, the TBA that Hepp brought to lunch was corked. He was clearly embarrassed by this, but it gave him the perfect opportunity to gently boast of his experiments with a new glass stopper that will replace corks in about half the winery’s production next year.

“We’ll start using them with the entry-level wines that aren’t typically cellared a long time,” he said, “but we also want to test them on a few of our noble sweet wines to see how they work over time.”

A great TBA can last half a century or more, so I’d like to volunteer right now to taste one of those glass-stoppered TBAs in about 30 years. Purely in the interest of science, you understand.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.