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Jacobus Kühn founded a wine estate in Oestrich-Winkel in 1786, and his first name still graces the entry-level wine today. Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn is now run by Peter Bernhard and Viktoria, the twelfth generation. Its 21 hectares are planted almost entirely with Riesling and farmed according to Demeter guidelines. What the conservative Rheingau once dismissed as a crackpot idea has proved to be a strength: Rieslings of crystalline clarity, built on slate and quartzite, without heavy oak or long ageing. The Grosses Gewächs wines from Doosberg, Jungfer and St. Nikolaus are among the finest German Riesling has to offer.
More about Peter Jakob Kühn
From Jacobus to Peter Bernhard: Twelve Generations of Riesling
The name of the entry-level wine gives it away: Jacobus was the man who founded the estate in Oestrich-Winkel in 1786. It has remained in the hands of the Kühn family ever since. In 1978 Angela and Peter Jakob took over as the eleventh generation and set about a radical change, moving away from volume towards quality and away from chemicals towards the Riesling grape as an expression of their terroir.
Demeter in the Conservative Rheingau
When Peter Jakob Kühn converted to biodynamic farming in 2004, he reaped little but head-shaking in the tradition-conscious Rheingau. Sheep between the rows? Horn manure and valerian? To many of his neighbours it smacked of the esoteric. The estate has carried the Demeter seal since 2009, and the critics have fallen silent. In recent years the Rauenthaler Baiken and the Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg have joined the Doosberg, Klosterberg, Lenchen, St. Nikolaus, Hendelberg and Jungfer vineyards. Year after year, the 21 hectares prove that biodynamics and top quality do not exclude each other; each depends on the other.
The same philosophy of restraint governs the cellar: spontaneous fermentation, no fining, minimal sulphur. The wines find their own way, and the winemaker merely accompanies them. What comes out tastes not of method but of place: Doosberg with its cool minerality, Jungfer with its delicate spice.
Alsatian Schooling, Rheingau Signature
A new chapter began in 2012 when Peter Bernhard and his wife Viktoria joined the estate. The son had previously worked at Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace and for several Burgundy producers, and he brought back an even finer feel for acid structure and extraction. The wines became more precise, their contours sharper. The VDP classified several of the family's sites as Grosses Gewächs, confirming what connoisseurs had long known.
From Jacobus to Trockenbeerenauslese
The entry-level wines (Jacobus, Alte Reben, formerly known as Rheinschiefer, and Quarzit) are already benchmarks in their category. Anyone who starts here gets a sense of what follows in the Erste Lage and Grosses Gewächs wines. The nobly sweet Auslese and Beerenauslese wines from the Lenchen site reveal another side: concentrated but never heavy, with an acidity that carries even high residual sugar with elegance. The Kühn family masters the entire spectrum of Riesling, from bone-dry to lusciously sweet, always with the same signature: transparent, mineral and vibrant.