The Rheingau’s fame as a German wine region is based on its superb slate soil hillsides along a stretch of the Rhein where it turns west for thirty kilometers before continuing north to the sea. This forms a perfect, almost continuous south-facing slope on the northern bank making an ideal suntrap to ripen Riesling and even a little Pinot at one of the country’s oldest and most famous climats for Pinot Noir, the venerable Assmanshausen vineyard.