The estate

The Pfeffingen wine estate looks like a model Palatinate wine-producing operation. It is nestled in the midst of its beautifully contoured vineyards.

This is a family-run enterprise that is managed with continuity and the highest possible wine quality in mind. The entire estate, with its abundance of flowers, artifacts left over from Roman times, and its friendly people, make it seem that it could never have been any other way.

Yet it took half a century of development and hard work for the old multi-crop farm to become the modern, market-orientated Pfeffingen wine estate. This has been the life's work of Karl and Helene Fuhrmann, whose daughter Doris Eymael runs the enterprise today with the support of two family generations.

The vineyards stretch westward from the estate up the slope or lie directly around the house in relatively flat, warm sites with alluvial soil that always provide Kabinett-quality wines. During the second half of the 1980s, all of the vineyards were replanted as part of land reallocation measures.

They now stretch over a total of 11 hectares (total annual production of 8,000 cases). The best sites are Herrenberg and Weilberg, which in places have sandy soil, and in others soil with a very high limestone marl content covered by a top layer of loess.