Tradition and Origin

Situated on the 51st parallel, the Elbe Valley in Saxony is one of the smallest wine regions in Germany. The winegrowers here passionately cultivate around 525 hectares - only around 0.5% of the total German vineyard area. Today, only around one in every 300 bottles of German wine comes from the wine-growing region of Saxony.

Saxony's wine-growing landscape is characterized by its impressive steep slopes and terraced vineyards. These were created at the beginning of the 17th century when winegrowers from Württemberg brought terraced viticulture to the Elbe Valley. Today, they are culturally and historically significant monuments, popular tourist destinations and form the basis for the elegant wines produced by Saxony's winegrowers.

Another special feature of the wine-growing region of Saxony is the particular diversity that wine lovers can find here. Around 1,500 winegrowers, including around 1,400 leisure and hobby winegrowers - a good 20 percent of all hobby and leisure winegrowers in Germany - cultivate more than 70 different grape varieties along the Saxon Wine Route.

Schloss Wackerbarth cultivates a total of 19 grape varieties on an area of around 90 hectares. This makes us one of the largest wineries in both Saxony and Germany. The white varieties, which grow on around 80% of our vineyards, include Riesling and Müller-Thurgau, the two leading grape varieties in Saxony; Goldriesling, an elegant summer wine that is only grown by the Elbe Valley winegrowers; and a special offshoot of Traminer, which is found exclusively in our region and impresses with its floral yet delicate aromas.

Although the steep slopes and terraced vineyards of the Elbe Valley produce the best quality wines, their dry stone walls were not adequately maintained during the GDR era - i.e. for almost 50 years. This investment and renovation backlog still presents us winegrowers with challenges today and can only be resolved with great effort and not in the short term.

As the Saxon state winery, Schloss Wackerbarth has the largest share of steep slopes of all Saxon wineries - it cultivates over 20 hectares and thus around 20% of all steep slopes and terraced vineyards in Saxony and maintains a total of around 25,000 m² of dry stone walls on this area.

In addition to the centuries-old dry stone walls, the vines in the Elbe Valley are also regularly exposed to extreme weather conditions such as winter and late frosts, hail, torrential rainfall and strong or prolonged heatwaves. 

Weather-related low yields combined with above-average cultivation efforts on steep slopes are a challenge: between 2009 and 2013, Elbe Valley winegrowers lost 2.5 entire vintages and thus several million euros in sales due to extreme weather conditions. In April 2024, one of the most severe late frost events in recent decades led to a harvest loss of 75 percent of the entire vintage in just one night.

The weather-related challenges combined with the strong focus of Saxony's winegrowers on “quality over quantity” mean that Saxony has the lowest average yield of all German wine regions at 47 hl/ha. This is only about half of the German average of 90 hl/ha. Wines from Saxony are something special - a rarity.

In Saxony, the grapes continue to ripen under unique climatic conditions - favored by the prevailing influences of the continental climate, the large temperature differences between warm days and cool nights and a long ripening period. As a result, the grapes retain their distinctive aromas and natural freshness until late in the ripening process.

We press “cool climate” wines with aromatic elegance and finesse from our Saxon grapes. These are regularly recognized and awarded prizes at renowned national and international tastings such as “AWC Vienna”, “Mundus Vini” and “Best of Riesling”.