Philosophy

Inspired by nature.

The Zimmer-Mengel winery is in an idyllic location – nestled amongst vineyards – at the edge of Engelstadt. Looking out over the Selz valley and the hilly Rhine-Hesse landscape, the beauty of the region is evident. The area offers ideal conditions for growing lively wines with light acidity and a salty, spicy and mineral character. The Mainz basin was once an ancient sea, as proven by the calcium deposits still found in the soil today. On the sunny slopes above the basin, one just feels a bit closer to the heavens. That’s why we’ve chosen an angel as our distinctive symbol and lucky charm.

Born for wine.

Our vinery has been in the family for more than five decades. The third generation of the family – Andreas and Stephanie Mengel – manages it today. The oldest of our three sons has been our cellar master for several years. Fabian successfully completed his studies in viticulture at Geisenheim College. Our customers and guests can rest assured in the future of the business.

A long history.
In brief.

Our vineyard originated in the old town centre of Engelstadt. That’s where Otto Zimmer founded the family business, later passing it on to his daughter Trudel and her husband Heinrich Mengel. With this change, our name grew from “Weingut Otto Zimmer” to “Weingut Zimmer-Mengel”, or “Zimmer-Mengel Winery.” The business grew by leaps and bounds, spreading to more areas of town over time, until the pattern of growth became impractical. That’s when we moved to our current estate in the middle of the vineyards, almost 15 years ago. In this idyllic place, work and life are finally a harmonious whole. We can turn our full attention here to ensuring the quality of every drop, allowing our guests to experience and enjoy the fascinating world of wine face to face.

Nature’s gifts.
Our vineyards.

The higher altitude location of our vineyards tends to encourage a relatively late and long period of ripening for our grapes, while clay and lime marl soils produce wines with minerality – and a salty, spicy freshness. This is why dry Pinot Blanc, Pinot gris, varieties of Pinot noir, Riesling, Silvaner, Chardonnay, Scheurebe and Portugieser are our specialties. Everything on our grounds is focused on quality, bolstered by the exquisite areas we are able to cultivate – the Engelstadt Römerberg, Engelstadt Adelpfad, Elsheim Bockstein, Elsheim Blume and Jugenheim Goldberg. Approximately 60 percent white grape varieties and 40 percent red grow on a total of 20 hectares with 100,000 vines. We have placed particularly high value on caring for the land in a natural manner, using gentle viticulture techniques since the 1970s. Planting vegetation helps us to prevent the erosion of our priceless vineyards and support the vines with groundcover in a natural way.

The four seasons.
On display in the vineyard.

Even in winter, we’re already preparing our vineyard for the coming year. We carefully influence the quality and harvest we’re looking for with purposeful pruning. We do intensive work on our soil in spring. This creates ideal conditions for our vines to grow. We reap the fruits of our labour in summer. This is when we carefully thin out the thick leaves in the grape zone. The improved ventilation this provides helps avoid infections caused by mould. We can also adjust the amount of our harvest as we continuously monitor our grapes during this season. And in the fall, we harvest and process the grapes just at the right time. This is especially good for our white grapes, while we use traditional mash fermentation for our full-bodied and stout red wines. After the fermentation process, we attempt to preserve the taste profile we’ve created by refraining from further intervention whenever possible. This helps retain the typical character of the wine in the bottle as well. After aging, we allow some of our red wines to mature at least another year in barrique barrels to achieve a well-developed flavor.

Find your wine.
It’s simple.
Select from 100,000 vines.

We offer three categories of quality to help you get your initial bearings. You can recognise the variety of grapes used by the large first letter on the bottle’s label.

Estate wines

An ideal place to start. These elegant and high-quality wines come from various areas in our vineyards and have a typical character for the region. You can recognise them by their golden labels.

Local wines

These premium wines come from the best vineyards in a particular location. We guarantee their quality and style through small harvests and long aging periods in our wine cellar. You can recognise them by their black labels.

Specialty soil wines

Less is more. That’s why these wines are created from our best micro-locations with chalky and marl clay soil. They get their special quality through small harvests, perfectly ripe grapes and strict selection through hand-picking. You can recognise them by their white labels.
Our wines