Yui Kee Co. Ltd.
Yui Kee Co. Ltd.
Composer : Wilhelm Lueckenotte, Hainfeld/Pfalz July 2004
Our wine area is located on the left side of the upper Rhine valley in direct neighbourhood of the French Elsass. On the other side of the valley are the Mountains of the Blackforest.
The "German Wineroad" starts in Schweigen on the French/Elsass border runs parallel to the foothills of the forested "Haardt Mountains", in north direction until Bockenheim, is also Germany´s oldest tourist road.
The "German Wineroad" a blessed nature, is the home of our winegardens.
Our "wineroad" is crossing and connecting many small and some of the most famous German winevillages, like a long chain of pearls, located middle in the large and endless green of the winegardens. Here is also Hainfeld located, a romantic baroque village, surrounded by old castles.
Around every corner are works of art and architecture that make history come alive, particularly the middle ages. There are splendid views from ancient hilltop castles, such as Schoss Ludwigshöhe, Hambacher Schloss, Burg Trifels, build by the kings, emperos and bishops who, for centuries, celebrated coronations and communion with wine from the Pfalz.
Protected against the cold east- and west, winds between two large chains of mountains originate a special microclimate, all this is our important geographic benefit. The sunshinehours are nearly double, in compare with Cologne/Germany, per annum. This was the presupposition for growing excellent wines, even in comparison with other german wine areas.
Roman excavations and the oldest wine (A.D. 300) chronicle the beginning of the Pfalz´s long viniculture tradition.
The winter is short and mild. The german spring is starting here every year at the very first.
The flowers of Almond, "sweet chestnuts" trees, brought in by the Romans, are decorating the hills, surrounded by streets with walnut- and all kind of fruit trees. The Pfalz area has three main efforts in agriculture: wine, vegetable- and tobacco production.
Countless small and nice villages, most preserved in the old romantic medieval style, a very popular target by visitors, are inviting to linger, enjoing the unique and rich nature together with good food and our Pfalz wines. The people who are living here are calling their land tender and proudly "our piece of Paradise".
"If you think you are dreaming, then you are here."
Pfaelzer hospitality is just as inviting. Here is every visitor a guest, invited everywhere for a winetasting in one of the many individual wine cellars and tavern , which are running still by vintner families, mostly free of charge!!
The climate, topography and soil influence the quality and character of our wines and creating this rarely fullbody winetype.
How to make wine and take care about the vineyards, from the wintertime beginning by cutting all the last year grown winetwigs by hand, is a very hard job. In the early summer beginning, selecting and reducing the volume by cutting down the grapes before growing ripe, in order to improve the quality of the others:
Quality rather than quantity
has priority of our area.
The last step is, how to proceed the grapes from vintage, pressing , fill the wine in barrels until the final filling into bottles, takes months time and is everybody's family secret, to pass on from generation to generation. Same vinegardens, same grapes, but very different results in the wine character!
To make wine is a very special handicraft, a combination of passion, tradition and family-experience by strictly respecting the nature. The use of technical support is only as much as necessary.
Our wines are still a result of the individual handicraft, and not an industrial product.
All of those individual efforts are reflecting in the vintner wines.
So individual are the vintner, so individual is the wine. The consequence from this is as following:
The criterion about quality and the guarantee therefore is mainly reflected in the good name of the vintner, not on the type of the grapes and not in the location neither by nice lables. This to understand is the base of any judgement about wine and the quality. This background knowledge is most important also to comment the prices of wine. The winelable at the bottle show objectivly what is required by law, no more and not less, and paper is patient!
Our area don't produce mass wines like "Liebfraumilch" or "Blue Nun". The last are pure marketing products. Nobody of our vintner have ever heard the name of "Blue Nun" before.
Moreover is to mention, that our red wine is continually increasing the consumption in the last years, here special with our unique Pfalz red grape of "Dornfelder", a dark red wine, famous for his light character. We are well known for our white wine which is representing appr. 70% of our wine production, but our Dornfelder red wine with his fruity character and the touch of ripe berries contains very little natural tannien extract, which many people like to avoid. Other prefer this taste very much, special the lover of Cabernet and Sauvignon-Cabernet wines.