Weingut Stefan Meyer

Winery Stefan Meyer in the Palatinate

Making wine was simply in his blood. Stefan Meyer's great-grandfather was a vintner and wine merchant at the same time, his grandfather then founded the current family winery in Rhodt unter Rietburg and was one of the first to bottle his own wines in the 1950s. That was pretty far ahead at that time. And when there was nothing to do at the winery, he simply strapped a crate of sample bottles onto his bicycle rack and took the train across the country. All the way up to the area around Göttingen. There, for example, he introduced entire fire brigade associations to their liquid Palatinate joie de vivre. Sounds like "punk marketing" today, but it worked. Today, with your 16 hectares of vineyards, you are on the direct way to organic certification, which will be completed with the 2021 vintage, and you are also pursuing biodynamic approaches in the vineyards. Because no other form of cultivation is better suited to winegrowing, and none so intensively embraces nature, the soils and their vibrancy, and unites them with the terroir in the wine.

Winery Stefan Meyer Location

Between Haardt and the Rhine Plain, on the edge of the Palatinate Forest Nature Park, the Upper Rhine Graben borders on the Haardt low mountain range. As a result, very different geological eras can be found side by side in the soils: mottled sandstone from the Triassic, mineral limestone deposits from the primeval seas of the Tertiary, or silty, rich clay from the Paleozoic. For viticulture very valuable soil resources. But also because of the climate good conditions prevail here. The Southern Palatinate is one of the warmest and sunniest regions in Germany, but is also influenced here by cooling downdrafts from the Haardt.

Winery Stefan Meyer Wine

Today, the assortment is divided into two lines: simple everyday wines in the Palatinate tradition - wines with higher demands in the upscale line, which is divided into soil types, local and site wines.

• The range of soil types - In these wines, the typical soil types of their vineyards are expressed with a lot of drinking fluency and southern Palatinate charm, but also with sophistication. They are partly aged in wood.
• The assortment of local wines - show structure, power and individuality of the Rhodt vineyards, small grape clones provide more taste, they are exclusively harvested by hand and spontaneously fermented in wooden barrels.
• The site wines - For these wines, only strictly selected grapes from individual plots are vinified. The vineyards with small-grape Burgundy clones are planted with a high density of over 9,000 vines per hectare in some cases. Here, too, Stefan Meyer's team naturally handpicks the grapes, ferments them spontaneously, then allows the wines a long yeast storage period and bottles them without filtration.

Their grapes in the valleys are:

• Riesling
• Pinot Gris
• White Burgundy
• Chardonnay
• Pinot Noir
• Syrah