Donnhoff

Weingut Dönnhoff is at Oberhausen an der Nahe, a village of a few hundred people on the middle stretch of the Nahe, between Bad Kreuznach and Schlossböckelheim. The family came to the area as farmers around 250 years ago. Hermann Dönnhoff, Helmut's grandfather, turned it into a wine estate in the 1920s, planting Riesling in the best sites and bottling and selling the finest lots under their individual vineyard names, which was unusual at the time. Helmut Dönnhoff took over in 1966, when there were four hectares. He sold the farmland in 1971 and put everything into wine. His son Cornelius joined in 2007 and owns and runs the estate today; the two of them work together in the cellar. There are now around 25 hectares.

The Nahe is the argument for this estate. It is a small region wedged between the Mosel and the Rheingau, and it is unusually varied geologically even by German standards, which is why Dönnhoff bottle so many of their sites separately. Their holdings run through Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle (slate, sandstone and limestone), Oberhäuser Brücke, Oberhäuser Leistenberg (slate), Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg (porphyry), Norheimer Dellchen and Kirschheck, Kreuznacher Krötenpfuhl and Kahlenberg, and Roxheimer Höllenpfad on red sandstone. Those are individual named vineyards, not brands, and the estate bottles most of them separately.

The farming is sustainable rather than certified organic. The Nahe is dry, and Dönnhoff do not irrigate, on the principle that vines should be made to root deeply; instead they cover the soil with straw and compost to hold water in. Vines are trained on wire at about 6,000 to the hectare and picked by hand in two or three passes through each vineyard. Fruit is pressed within three hours of picking. Fermentation is spontaneous, in a mixture of stainless steel and traditional German oak casks of 1,200 and 2,400 litres, and the cellar is built so that any lot can go into either, which gives them room to decide late.

The range runs from dry Rieslings through Kabinett and Spätlese to Auslese, Beerenauslese and Eiswein, plus a set of Grosse Gewächse from the top sites, some Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, and a little sparkling. Prices at the top are what you would expect of one of Germany's most admired estates. Prices at the bottom are not, and that is the interesting part.

Two of the dry wines are worth singling out. Tonschiefer takes its name from the grey clay slate it grows on, principally in the Oberhäuser Leistenberg, and it is the best introduction to the house I can offer. Roxheimer Höllenpfad is a single-village wine off a steep, south-facing site on red sandstone, and it is the more serious of the two.

Above them sit the Grosses Gewächs wines from Hermannshöhle, Dellchen and Felsenberg, and the sweet wines. German dry Riesling remains, to my mind, the most underpriced fine wine category there is, and those two dry bottlings are a good way to test that claim without spending a great deal.