For thirty kilometres the Rhine turns west, and every vineyard of the Rheingau faces full south across the water — the aristocrat's riesling terrace. The Cistercians of Kloster Eberbach built here the largest vineyard estate of medieval Europe; in 1720 Schloss Johannisberg replanted its slope with Riesling exclusively, the first estate to commit wholly to the grape.
Johannisberg also gave German wine its founding legend: in 1775 the courier bearing permission to pick arrived late, the grapes rotted on the vine, and the shrivelled harvest revealed Spätlese — the discovery that nobility could come from delay. Rheingau Riesling is firmer and drier than its Mosel cousin: peach and green herbs on a smoky mineral spine, a wine of princely abbeys rather than dizzying slate.