As the Rhine flows past Rüdesheim it sweeps dramatically northwards. This huge bend in the river has carved out hills that rise up behind the town and has created near perfect conditions for growing grapes. This is part of the Rheingau that stretches to Mainz. The vineyards on this stretch of river produce Germany’s most prestigious wines. The banks of the river, dotted with small towns and castles backed by vineyards, is an incredibly beautiful landscape.
Wine culture started here with the arrival of the Romans, for whom the Rhine was the natural boundary between the Roman territories to the west and Germania to the east. The collapse of Rome resulted in a collapse in wine production along the Rhine until the spread of Christianity revived it. In medieval Germany, monasteries played a vital role in developing viticulture, and that long association continues still today.
The link between monasteries and wine in the region dates to the time of Saint Hildegard – one of the most famous German saints, and one of the most prominent women in the medieval Catholic Church. Hildegard was born in 1098 into minor nobility. Unfortunately for her, her parents had decided that she would be ‘dedicated’ to the church. Aged 14, she was packed off to a nunnery.
It turns out that she was perfect for a life behind monastery walls. She had regular visions from a very young age that she never spoke of until, aged 42, the voice of God spoke to her as a “living, blazing fire”. News of this spread and her visions were ‘authenticated’ by a group of church theologians. These prophetic and apocalyptic visions were turned into a book. Officially recognised by the church, her fame spread.
It was this that allowed her to start her own convent on the eastern bank of the Rhine in Bingen, directly opposite Rüdesheim on the western bank. Over the years, her religious community in Bingen outgrew the convent and in 1165 Hildegard opened a second franchise on the hillside above Rüdesheim. The original Bingen abbey has long gone, the successor abbey at Eibingen near Rüdesheim still exists.
The Abbey of St. Hildegard was my destination for a walk through the vineyards of the Rheingau that started at the Niederwald Monument. The Rheingau is planted with 3,200 hectares of vines, 2,500 hectares of which are dedicated to Riesling, and there are numerous trails and small tracks that weave up and down the hillside through the vines. On a sunny day, it makes for a glorious walk.
Taking the cable car from Rüdesheim to Niederwald Monument you float over the vines, on the way back the walk through them is no less dramatic. There are long distance walking routes through this region, and this short walk definitely whetted my appetite for more. It was April and the vines needed another month or two before the leaves and grapes started to appear.
The walk though was no less atmospheric for that. There were few other people hiking, and the sweeping views down the hillside to the Rhine and beyond were magnificent. As I headed south the spires of the abbey became more visible until I was finally walking up one final hill to the abbey gates. There was an unusual sculpture park near the entrance.
The abbey had extremely mixed fortunes following the death of St. Hildegard in 1179. The sister abbey in Bingen was destroyed in 1632 by a Swedish army. The nuns took up permanent residence in the abbey above Rüdesheim, which itself went through centuries of conflict, famine and even plague. In the end it was secularised during the French Revolution in 1803.
It was revived as a working abbey 101 years later in 1904 with the arrival from Prague of 12 Benedictine nuns. The nuns were evicted by the Nazis, but monastic life began again in 1945. Today, it is home to 35 nuns and much of it is open to visit or by guided tour. They also produce their own wines. I headed back down the hill to the Hafen Park and a bar in town for a refreshing glass of … beer.
