Messrs. Ewald being installed almost in the heart or the Rheingau can readily draw their supplies of wine from the most favoured localities. Johannisberg is within a few miles of Rüdesheim, and in those years when, owing to the grapes not having thoroughly ripened, the wine is only of intermediate value as a still wine, it serves admirably for conversion into sparkling wine, retaining as it does its powerful bouquet. Ingelheim, too, noted for its vineyards of black grapes, whose produce is much sought after for blending with the finer sparkling Rhine wines, is only a few miles higher up the river, on the opposite bank. The drier varieties of sparkling hocks and moselles shipped by Messrs. Ewald to England have the merit of retaining all the fine flavour and natural perfume of the higher-class growths from which, as a rule, these wines are prepared.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MATHEUS MÜLLER AT ELTVILLE. (p. 186)
Above Rüdesheim the waters of the Rhine expand, the left bank of the river, if still lofty, is no longer precipitous, while the right continues almost flat so soon as the Rochusberg is left behind. Between here and Eltville all the more celebrated vineyards of the Rheingau are passed in rapid succession—Geisenheim-Rothenberg, Johannisberg, Steinberg, Marcobrunn, Kiedrich-Grafenberg, Rauenthal, and others. At Eltville—the former capital of the Rheingau, and where Gunther, of Schwarzburg, resigned his crown to Charles IV., and died poisoned, it is said, by his successful rival—we find one of the most extensive wine establishments in Germany, that of Matheus Müller, who enjoys a high reputation in England both for his still and sparkling hocks and moselles. His stock ordinarily consists of from 800 to 1,000 stuck—equivalent to a quarter of a million gallons—of still Rhine and Moselle wines, much of it of the
best years, and from vineyards of repute, together with nearly a million bottles of sparkling wines stored in his cellars at Eltville and on the road to Erbach, the aggregate length of which is some 3,400 feet. The sparkling wines repose in long cool vaulted galleries similar to many cellars in the Champagne, while the still wines are stored in capacious subterranean halls each 100 yards in length.
For his higher-class sparkling hocks Herr Müller derives his principal supplies from the Rheingau, partly from his own vineyards at Eltville, Rauenthal, and Hattenheim, and partly by purchases at Erbach, Hallgarten, Œstrich, Winkel, Johannisberg, Geisenheim, and Rudesheim; while for his best sparkling moselles, Berncastel, Graach, Trèves, and the Saar districts are laid under contribution. The Palatinate growths of Dürkheim, Deidesheim, Mussbach, Haardt, Rhodt, &c., serve as the basis for the medium and cheaper sparkling hocks, and for sparkling moselles of a corresponding character such wines as Zeltinger, Rachtiger, Erdener, Aldegonder, Winninger, &c., are used. Ingelheim and Heidesheim furnish the wine from black grapes necessary in a subordinate degree to all sparkling hocks, and very freely had recourse to when it is desired to impart a champagne character to the wine, as is commonly the case when this is intended for consumption in Germany. Herr Müller invariably presses the black grapes himself, in order that the wine may be as light in colour as possible. As the house annually lays down large stocks of vin brut it is under no necessity of
drawing upon them until they have attained the requisite maturity and developed all their finer qualities.
The dry sparkling hocks and moselles, such as are shipped by Herr Müller to England and its colonies, receive a large addition of liqueur when destined for the Russian market. His sparkling Johannisberger and high-class sparkling moselle from Rheingau and Moselle wines of superior vintages are of delicate flavour and great softness, and are frequently shipped without any liqueur whatever. Besides Moussirender Rheinwein of a champagne character, and largely consumed in Germany and Belgium, Herr Müller makes a veritable champagne from wine imported by him from the Champagne district. His shipments also include red sparkling Assmannshauser—the result of a blend of Assmannshauser, Ingelheimer, and other red Rhenish wines—aromatic and full-bodied, and dry or moderately sweet according to the country to which it is intended to be exported.
