(Claude Auguste / Editorial team / animated pic: runwayml)
Twenty years ago, Carolin Spanier and Hans Oliver Spanier were not merely regarded as ambitious in Rheinhessen. Many considered them slightly mad. Two young, good-looking middle-class people who were convinced that Rheinhessen of all places – this region which people in the Rheingau and on the Moselle liked to mock as ‘transplanted potato fields’ – could produce great, precise, long-lasting dry white wines. And world-class ones at that. And that was what immediately caught my interest, being a little older than the two of them.
In the early 2000s, Rheinhessen was vast in terms of area, but in terms of image it was still firmly overshadowed by Germany’s prestigious wine-growing regions. Plenty of mass production, plenty of co-operatives, plenty of run-of-the-mill litre-bottled wine. The idea that a new avant-garde in viticulture should emerge here of all places was considered, to put it mildly, grotesque in many traditional regions. Great dry Rieslings? From Hohen-Sülzen? From the border region of Zellertal (OK: there had already been a certain tradition of single-vineyard wines there before)? From an area that for decades had stood for uncomplicated table wines, for drinking whilst swaying to Heino songs?
Yet it was precisely there that Carolin Spanier and H.O. Spanier began their campaign against mediocrity, and they did something that almost the entire surrounding industry laughed at at the time: they switched to biodynamics early on. Together with Philipp Wittmann, they were among the very first serious biodynamic estates in Rheinhessen. Today, biodynamics has long been part of an international discourse on quality. Twenty years ago, it was a source of ridicule in many quarters. Giving up chemical additives? Many winegrowers regarded it as esoteric nonsense. Some said so openly, others behind closed doors.
The Gillot-Spanier family pressed on regardless, because they noticed that their soils were becoming more vibrant, their grapes were ripening more precisely and their wines were gaining in intensity. That is a significant difference. At Battenfeld-Spanier and Kühling-Gillot, biodynamics was never a matter of folklore, but a means to an end. And the end was always the same: better wines. And then there was the experiment of merging two essentially different estates into one, thereby subordinating the historical narrative – particularly that of Kühling-Gillot – to a fresh, new legend: simply drawing a line under it. Without needing lawyers like me to do so.
Above all, however, the two of them realised early on something that few others grasped at the time: Germany would only regain its international stature through top-quality dry wines. Not through the romanticism of residual sugar, but through terroir, precision and structure.
On the Roter Hang in Nierstein, which Carolin Spanier brought with her from her family’s winegrowing tradition, Rieslings were produced that developed a salty, dramatic character. Pettenthal, Rothenberg, Ölberg and Hipping are now counted amongst Europe’s great dry Riesling vineyards. At the same time, H.O. Spanier began to rethink the Zellertal. A region that, for a long time, hardly anyone took seriously. Limestone soils, cool air currents, an almost Burgundian clarity of acidity – he recognised all this very early on. Kirchenstück, Frauenberg and Schwarzer Herrgott became wines that demonstrated that Upper Rheinhessen was also capable of depth, tension and ageing potential.
We must never forget: all this took place at a time when German wine was only just beginning to shake off its infernal post-war provincialism. The old labels, the old-fashioned language, the ponderousness of many estates – the Spaniers countered this with a new aesthetic. Clarity. Architecture. Precision. International appeal. Without, however, producing Americanised fruit bombs for the export market.
Financially, the newlyweds took risks that are often forgotten today. Renewing major vineyards, working biodynamically, establishing international markets, modernising the cellars, building a new tasting room and their home – all of this cost money. A lot of money. Whilst others were still debating, the Spaniers were already investing in a future they could see more clearly than many of their colleagues.
Today, after 20 years of working together in their joint venture, Battenfeld-Spanier and Kühling-Gillot are long-established leaders in the industry. Their wines are traded via the Place de Bordeaux; they rank amongst the most important German exporters in the premium segment; and young winemakers look to them for inspiration, just as people used to look to French role models. What remains particularly interesting is the speed of this rise. Twenty years is nothing in viticulture. A generation. Nothing more.
And that is the pair’s primary achievement: that they have demonstrated just how quickly wine-growing regions can change when people are prepared to work against ridicule, against complacency and against the status quo – to swim against the tide. Suddenly, some of Europe’s most refined dry Rieslings were emerging from the ‘potato-field’ regions.
And those who laughed back then are actually quite happy to drink these wines themselves today.