10/05/2026
Scenes from harvest at Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn (Weingut Peter Jakob Kühn) in the middle Rheingau, where w**egrower Peter Bernhard Kühn— helming the family estate in its 11th generation—reports the grapes were smiling back at them.
Pictured is the renowned Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg vineyard overlooking the Rhein. Its steep southwest-facing slopes on poor phyllite-slate imbue the grapes with the crystalline vibrancy Peter’s w**es are known for.
It was Peter’s parents, Peter Jakob and Angela, who charged into biodynamics in the late ‘90s —among the very first in Germany to do so—putting the estate on the map through an early commitment to dry Riesling and a farming philosophy centered on the life of the vineyard: the connections between vine, soil and family. In 2004, Kühn became the first Rheingau estate certified biodynamic.
Today, Peter and his wife Viktoria continue that work across 20 hectares of vineyards in Oestrich, Hallgarten, Mittelheim, Rauenthal, and Rüdesheim. They seek to convey the feeling of these vineyards and their kaleidoscopic arrays of loess, marl, quartzite and phyllite slate soils, to give even greater voice to the living earth here.
Ask Peter and he’ll tell you the w**e decides what it wants from year to year: when to drop lees, when to go through malo. He just listens. Some evenings you can find him on the Klosterberg vineyard above Oestrich at sunset, or up on Jungfer’s turtle-shell hill adjoining Hallgarten in the early morning — sites that taught him how to listen as a grower.
