Slate Terraces Above the Lower Mosel

Winninger Röttgen

German site names run village first, vineyard second, so Winninger Röttgen is the Röttgen of Winningen, on the lower Mosel upstream of Koblenz, where the river joins the Rhine. The name comes from roden, to clear: ground taken into cultivation from uncleared hillside.

Position

Winningen holds five Einzellagen: Röttgen, Uhlen, Hamm, Brückstück and Domgarten. Hamm is the smallest, Domgarten the largest and frames the village itself. All five fall inside the Grosslage Weinhex under the 1971 nomenclature. Röttgen and Uhlen are the two the VDP singled out in 2003, ranking both as sites of the first class; under the association's current terminology they are VDP.Grosse Lage.

The Einzellage is not confined to Winningen. Röttgen is registered within the Weinhex under Winningen and under Güls, the Koblenz district downstream, so the site carries across the municipal boundary and the Winninger prefix identifies the Winningen portion. It faces south to south-southeast and is worked entirely in terraces rather than on open slope. Winningen's terraced vineyards rank with the Calmont and the Ediger-Eller slopes among the steepest planted ground on the Mosel.

The Rock

Röttgen is Devonian slate threaded with quartz veins, with loess washed down over it. The loess is not incidental cover: it buffers the acidification that unrelieved slate would otherwise drive.

The comparison that clarifies Röttgen is Uhlen, Winningen's other Grosse Lage, which runs out of Winningen into neighbouring Kobern-Gondorf and covers around 14.6 hectares between 75 and 210 metres, at gradients of 50 to 70 percent. Uhlen is geologically split. Its Laubach parcel sits on calcareous, fossil-rich slate of the Emsian, an oddity in a district whose Devonian shales are otherwise close to lime-free, while Roth Lay is dominated by iron-oxide-rich Ems quartzite. Röttgen carries no such calcareous seam. It is slate, quartz and loess, and what sets it apart is aspect and terracing rather than an anomalous bedrock chemistry.

The Wine

Riesling, almost without exception, as across the Untermosel. Knebel bottles its Röttgen as a VDP.Grosses Gewächs.

Growers

Heymann-Löwenstein was founded in 1980 by Reinhard Löwenstein and his wife Cornelia and farms just under 14 hectares, almost all Riesling with roughly 2 percent Spätburgunder. The estate has been a VDP member since 1997. Röttgen is one of its Winningen sites, held alongside Uhlen Blaufüsser Lay, Roth Lay and Laubach, with Kirchberg and Stolzenberg at Hatzenport. In the Uhlen it works about 5 of that site's 14.6 hectares.

Knebel, now run by Matthias Knebel, traces family viticulture in Winningen to 1642 and is a VDP member. Its Röttgen goes out as a VDP.Grosses Gewächs.

This comprehensive guide is part of the WineSaint Wine Region Guide collection. Last updated: September 2026.