Tesch

Nahe, Germany

Tesch is a family owned wine estate in the Nahe region in Southwest-Germany. The estate has been owned and run by the Tesch family since 1723, and is specializes in producing Riesling wines with a very specific and lively character. The estate endeavour to produce a wine that is not only excellent to drink, but is a perfect compliment for food. Tesch is ranked among the German top estates by national and international wine competitions.

The famous Riesling wines are produced in only top vine yard locations in the Nahe region such as called Königsschild, Löhrerberg, Krone, Karthauser and 'st. Remigiusberg. All vineyard sites of the estate are classified to produce a Grosses Gewachs (Grand Cru).

Langenlonsheim is one of the oldest and largest wine growing villages in the Nahe region. It is located five miles from the Rhine, and the region is very lucky to share the Rhine valley climate. In contrast to the famous sites of the Rhine valley, the vineyards got shield from harsh west wind by surrounding hills, which leads to a different character compared to the Rhine counterparts.

Dr. Martin Tesch, which got his title in microbiology, started to work in the parental wine estate in 1996. After his father retired son Martin got the possibility to reconstruct the entire estate. He changed everything. With 2001 Tesch produced his new modern stile Riesling for the first time, the Riesling Unplugged.  In a time of mass production Unplugged represents the return to the basics Tesch explaines. And continues ?the wine is basically ready if you chop off the grapes, in the cellar you just convert sugar into alcohol. Unplugged is a pure dry Riesling bottled without any fining or filtration.

In 2002, Tesch changed his entire wine collection. He stopped producing any medium dry or sweet Rieslings, changed Labels and reduced his whole collection to 5 single vine yard wines plus the brand like Unplugged and the Dr. Tesch R a Riesling in a 1Liter size bottle. He established colour codes, an already familiar method to differ products, but never that consequently used with wine.

In his own unconventional way, Dr. Martin Tesch endeavours to make Riesling wines which reflect this diversity of soils. The wines of his small collection do not differ in grape variety, quality or residual sugar content. All of his Rieslings are dry in style. The wines differ merely in character, which is largely determined by the terroir upon which the vines are cultivated.

Martin Tesch was awarded Winemaker of the Year by Franffurter Allgemeine, Dec 2012