Location and landscape
Engelsfelsen is an officially listed single vineyard in Bühlertal in the Ortenau area of the wine-growing region Baden. The vineyard lies above Bühlertal in a side valley of the Black Forest, in the area of the Bühlot valley. Its slopes reach a gradient of up to 75 degrees and offer high levels of sunshine in autumn.
Soils and historic terraces
The soils consist of skeletal weathering soils of the Black Forest basement with a loessy clayey top layer and a slightly acidic reaction. The underlying Bühlertal granite is a biotite granite that releases potassium upon weathering. The historic vineyard area includes dry-stone walls, exposed rock formations and traditional vine training as a single-vine bush-vine culture.
Varieties and wines
Spätburgunder is the most important documented grape variety at Engelsfelsen and, according to one statement, makes up about 80 percent of the site. Gewürztraminer is also documented in a site-specific wine from Bühlertal. The documented wine styles include dry Spätburgunder and dry Gewürztraminer.
Cultivation and development
The historic vineyard section is maintained with traditional single-vine systems and manual work on the dry-stone wall terraces. A documented Spätburgunder originates predominantly from historic single vines. For another Engelsfelsen Spätburgunder, selective hand-harvesting, destemming, a traditional 30-day mash fermentation, malolactic conversion and twelve months of maturation are given; another is matured in traditional wooden barrels. In 2009, the municipality of Bühlertal founded the Förderverein Engelsberg to reactivate part of the historic vineyard. In April 2014, the Engelssteig educational trail was opened.
