Geography and exposition
The vineyard covers roughly 23 hectares on ground that faces southeast toward a broad, lake-like stretch of the Rhine. Sources place its elevation between about 80 and 175 metres above sea level. The slope falls sharply to the river, and reported gradients vary considerably from one source to another, running from around 60 percent up to figures as high as 120 percent in the VDP site profile, while other accounts cite inclines up to about 70 percent. By any reckoning this is genuinely steep-slope viticulture.
The southeast aspect is the defining feature. It catches intense morning sun that warms the dark red soil early in the day, while the wide river below moderates temperature and reflects light. Hipping also sits comparatively sheltered from cooling winds, and it tends to yield fuller, more exotic wines than several of its Roter Hang neighbours as a result.
Geology
The substrate is Rotliegend, a heavily weathered red clayey slate coloured by iron oxide. The rock dates to the Permian, roughly 280 to 290 million years ago, when this ground lay near the equator as a hot, arid basin. Those red desert sediments were later buried, compressed and uplifted, and today they give the Roter Hang both its colour and its reputation. The VDP notes that the Grosses Gewächs zone corresponds to the upper part of the site, about eight hectares of the purest Rotliegend. Iron-rich red slate, early sun and river warmth together drive a distinct microclimate.
The wines
Hipping Riesling sits toward the ripe, expansive end of the Roter Hang spectrum. Descriptions of the wines run to white peach, lemon and orange, with smoky and crushed-stone notes over a firm, mineral-suffused palate carried by bright citrus acidity. The loamier red slate and the site's shelter push the wines toward body and richness, and the best examples are built to age for many years. St. Antony, whose flagship Pettenthal is the steeper and more exposed neighbour to the north, characterises its Hipping as the broader, more elegant of the two.
Producers
Several serious estates farm Hipping. Weingut Keller works a small parcel of about 0.6 hectare, the former Franz Karl Schmitt holding, and turns out a sought-after Grosses Gewächs from it. Kühling-Gillot, farmed biodynamically, has bottled a Hipping GG across recent vintages. Gunderloch, based just north in Nackenheim, holds fruit here alongside its parcels in adjacent Pettenthal, and St. Antony farms Hipping among its cluster of Nierstein Grosse Lage sites. Schätzel, Georg Albrecht Schneider and J. & H.A. Strub also hold parcels in the vineyard.
History
Hipping carries a footnote in British royal history. A Riesling from Franz Karl Schmitt's parcel here served as a coronation wine for Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and that same parcel, now farmed by Keller, later supplied the estate's 2012 Hipping bottling tied to the Diamond Jubilee.