Weingut Rings

The winery is located in the municipality of Freinsheim (Mittelhaardt-Deutsche Weinstraße area) in the German wine-growing region of Pfalz. The foundation stone for today's winery was laid by the parents with their mixed agricultural business with fruit and wine growing until well into the 1990s. Steffen Rings joined the business with the 2001 vintage and completed the conversion to exclusively viticulture. After his apprenticeship at the Wagner-Stempel winery in Rheinhessen, Andreas Rings also returned and has been running the winery together with his brother since 2008. The vineyards were expanded with the purchase of plots from the best sites. In 2010, a south-facing parcel in the Berntal nature reserve was recultivated on special terroir with limestone rocks and the old dry stone walls were rebuilt. The vineyards now cover 40 hectares of vines in the single vineyard sites Saumagen and Steinacker (Kallstadt), Schwarzes Kreuz (Freinsheim), Weilberg (Ungstein) and Felsenberg (Leistadt). They are planted with the white wine varieties Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as with the red wine varieties Pinot Noir, Blauer Portugieser, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, St. Laur ent and Syrah

In 2018, the newly built winery in the hills of the Freinsheim site "Schwarzes Kreuz" was put into operation. Most of the cellar is located under the hills. There, temperatures are consistently cool, so that no energy-intensive cooling is required. The cellar produces its own electricity via a photovoltaic system on the roof. The "green roof" of the wine press house stores precipitation and contributes to cooling the building, humidifying the air and filtering fine dust through evaporation. Three rainwater cisterns with 60,000 litres are used to irrigate the green areas and to protect the vines. The vines are cultivated according to the certified rules of organic viticulture. Already during pruning, the course is set for a quality-oriented, strictly reduced yield. Appropriate foliage work enables each individual grape to ripen evenly.

The final quality fine-tuning is thinning out (green harvest) in the summer. Through rigorous selection during the hand harvest and again in the cellar, only physiologically ripe and healthy grapes are processed. All wines are fermented spontaneously and stored for a long time on the full le es. In accordance with the VDP classification model, the wines are marketed in the lines estate wines, local wines, wines from first or great sites as well as a Réserve line and red wine cuvées of the "Das Kreuz" series. Bottle-fermented sparkling wines are also produced. The winery has been a member of the VDP (Association of German Prädikat Wine Estates) since 2015. Around 200,000 bottles of wine are produced annually.