The Terrace Moselle and how it all began

The terraces tower impressively between the slate rocks. Our vines grow here under special conditions: we grow wine on extremely steep slopes.

400 million years ago, in a distant chapter of the Earth's history, the Devonian period, there was a primeval ocean in the area of today's Mosel. Thick layers of sediment formed in it, several kilometers high. The primeval ocean was pushed together between the continental plates and the seabed was compressed under enormous pressure and high temperatures. The sediments turned into slate, which eventually folded into a mountain range. When the primeval continents of Gondwana and Laurussia collided, the foundations of today's soil formations were created.

« In addition to the assumption that the Celts already cultivated wine on the Moselle, it is certain that Moselle wine-growing experienced its first heyday at the latest from the second half of the third century AD [...] The Moselle landscape was first described in 371 AD by the poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius in his work " Mosella " . He refers several times to wine growing on the Moselle, describes the beauty of the area in poetic form and describes the people of the Moselle as a happy, hard-working people. » ¹ How right he was!

The first written evidence of winegrowing in Winningen can be found in a document from the year 871. Little by little, the vineyards expanded into the extremely steep slopes, which were formed into our unique cultural landscape by the manual construction of terraces and thus became usable for winegrowing.