Location and landscape
Ellergrub is a single vineyard in Enkirch in the Mosel wine-growing region of Rhineland-Palatinate. The vineyard landscape lies on the Mosel hillside between Enkirch and Traben-Trarbach. The rocky, terraced steep slope reaches a gradient of about 75 percent and includes damp hollows as well as dry terraces. The further steep-slope landscape is predominantly oriented to the south-west and is characterised by slate dry-stone walls, rocky outcrops and scrub.
Slate and microclimate
Ellergrub is characterised by blue slate and lies above a former slate quarry. The shallow to moderately deep soils of the further slopes near Enkirch and Starkenburg were formed from weathered Devonian slate from the Hunsrück. The Mosel microclimate influences the site.
Vines and wines
In Ellergrub, documented old, own-rooted vines are found; for one parcel, vines aged about 80 years are specified. Riesling is documented for the site. The wines produced from this are described as mineral and as having a substantial or fine character, and are predominantly made as dry wines.
History and classification
The Counts of Sponheim owned vineyards in Ellergrub from around 1250, which they acquired from the Abbey of Corvey, according to the municipality of Enkirch. Winegrowing on the further steep slope between Enkirch and Starkenburg is documented as far back as the early Middle Ages; until the 1950s, the area was completely farmed before parts of the middle and upper slopes were left fallow. Ellergrub is listed as a single vineyard in Rhineland-Palatinate’s register of wine-growing sites, is referred to by producers as GROSSE LAGE, and in 1868 belonged to the historically highest-classified Mosel sites in the Prussian wine-growing classification.
