Lime in the Slate

Winninger Uhlen Laubach

Winninger Uhlen means "the Uhlen of Winningen," following the German convention of village plus vineyard. Winningen sits on the lower Mosel a short distance upstream of Koblenz, in the stretch Reinhard Löwenstein named the Terrassenmosel in the 1980s, coining it as an alternative to the older "Untermosel." Uhlen Laubach is not the whole vineyard. It is one of three legally distinct sectors within Uhlen, each defined by the rock beneath it, and the only one built on lime-bearing stone.

Position and Terraces

The Uhlen forms an amphitheatre upstream of Winningen and extends across the municipal boundary between Winningen and Kobern-Gondorf. Twenty-nine terrace levels rise one above the next through the Koberner and Winninger stretches of the site. Holding them up takes something on the order of 17.4 kilometres of dry stone walling, broken up by 130 arched spans and 600 scissor stairs. Wall height averages 2.5 metres and reaches eight at the extreme, and the oldest courses are thought to have been laid between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. At about 19 hectares with 14.6 of them planted, no other terraced site in Germany runs larger in one piece, and none is more plainly a work of medieval civil engineering as much as a piece of farmland.

Vines run from about 75 metres above sea level at the river to roughly 210 metres at the top, on gradients generally cited at 50 to 70 percent. Individual terraced parcels are considerably steeper. Heymann-Löwenstein records its own Laubach holdings at 75 to 240 metres on gradients of 100 to 150 percent, exposed south-southwest; the upper figure sits above the 210 metre ceiling usually given for the site, and the delimited range should be taken as the authority.

Geology: The Laubach Layers

The name is the rock. The Laubach-Schichten are Devonian marine sediments, and the stone is a sandy slate carrying lime, as much as a tenth of it, which is what leaves the rock grey where other Mosel slate reads blue. It is not limestone: the lime is a component of the slate, not a separate stratum. Fossil shells and coral sit embedded in it, the record of a shallow sea floor that later filled with sediment.

The contrast inside Uhlen is the entire point of the subdivision. Blaufüsser Lay is a blue-grey clayey slate that interrupts the younger Laubach beds, which puts the two in direct geological relation whatever the surveyed parcel boundaries do. Roth Lay is Ems quartzite and High Rhine strata, grey at the base and reddening with iron oxide moving up the slope. By exposure the three run in a curve, Roth Lay close to due south, Laubach southwest, Blaufüsser Lay largely west, which places Laubach in the middle of the sequence and in the middle of the character range.

One Vineyard, Three Appellations

On 24 October 2018, after a years-long approval procedure, the European Commission granted Uhlen Blaufüsser Lay, Uhlen Laubach and Uhlen Roth Lay the status of protected designation of origin. The application came from the six estates holding plots in the site, with Reinhard Löwenstein as its most public advocate; Löwenstein has described the outcome as the first appellation contrôlée on German soil to be drawn with real rigour. The boundaries were surveyed by the state geological office, a deliberate correction of the 1971 German vineyard law, whose consolidations owed more to politics than to rock.

Rules come attached to the designations. Plantings must be Riesling, and they must stand at 7,000 vines to the hectare or denser. Cellar practice is held to traditional lines, with newer oenological methods ruled out, and the dry, off-dry and nobly sweet categories each carry a defined taste profile. The Prädikat designations Kabinett and Spätlese are not permitted. Uhlen is classified VDP.GROSSE LAGE, and the dry Laubach bottling is a VDP.GROSSES GEWÄCHS.

The Wine

Laubach is the cool, tightly wound member of the trio. Where Roth Lay's iron gives an austere line and Blaufüsser Lay reads stony and finely mineral, Laubach carries more flesh over its acid: peach and citrus, herbal spice, and a smoky, cool minerality running taut through a long finish. Texture is the distinguishing feature. Critics reach for Burgundian comparisons, which in a dry Mosel Riesling means breadth and lees-derived weight, not any softening of the acid.

Part of that comes from the cellar. Fermentation at Heymann-Löwenstein runs on ambient yeast in wooden casks. Nothing is added by way of enzyme or fining agent, and the wine stays on its lees through to at least the summer after the harvest. Part comes from plant material: vines in the Laubach parcels are past fifty years old on average, and a meaningful share of them were never grafted.

Producers

Six estates hold plots across the three Uhlen sectors: Freiherr von Heddesdorff, Fries, Heymann-Löwenstein, Knebel, Rüdiger Kröber and Richard Richter.

Heymann-Löwenstein is the reference address. The estate farms around 14 hectares in Winningen and holds roughly five of Uhlen's 14.6 planted hectares: 2.5 hectares across three parcels in Laubach, 1.6 across four in Roth Lay, and 0.7 in Blaufüsser Lay. It bottles all three sectors separately, which is what makes the geological argument legible in the glass rather than merely on paper.

Knebel, a VDP member since 2017, counts Uhlen and Röttgen as its two Grosse Lagen and bottles a Winninger Uhlen Grosses Gewächs. Richard Richter, just under seven hectares and ninety percent Riesling, works Uhlen alongside Röttgen and Brückstück. Röttgen, the other Winningen Grosse Lage, offers the closest local comparison: southeast rather than south-southwest, on a blue slate whose iron takes on oxygen fast enough that exposed surfaces look yellow-brown, and steeper still, at gradients Heymann-Löwenstein puts at 100 to 170 percent.

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