The spot where the small parlor with its beautiful wallpaper now welcomes guests used to be the courtyard entrance. “This is where the carriages used to pull up to drop off guests,” explains Ulla Bernhard-Räder, the hostess of this seemingly unassuming winery in the center of Flomborn. From the narrow street, the house looks uninviting, unremarkable—just like any farmstead in any village in Rheinhessen. What a mistake.

The door opens onto a beautiful Art Nouveau entrance hall, and a magnificent wooden staircase leads up to a balustrade. The table for guests is set in the Art Nouveau dining room, built in 1890 and furnished with dark wood. Through the colorful glass panes of the garden door, one of the last rays of sunshine from a fading golden autumn falls upon the lovingly set table.

"We harvested the last Riesling yesterday," says her son Philipp Räder, "and it just went through the press. Let's go down to the cellar!" His mother just smiles. "Here," she says, "we take our guests everywhere." At the Bernhard-Räder Winery, you’re immersed in the experience of wine life—which is exactly why they won the Great Wine Capitals award here in 2016. Here, a wine tasting isn’t just a tasting at a table where someone tells you something about wine.

We taste the Sauvignon Blanc in the former cowshed, a typical Rheinhessen “Kuhkapelle” with a stone cross vault. Today, the old barn is a beautifully designed wine bar featuring wine, grape pomace, and the wine jelly that will be served for breakfast tomorrow. “We want to show what Rheinhessen tastes like,” said Ulla. The Mainz specialty “Weck, Worscht, and Woi” is an absolute must here.

For the Pinot Noir, we climb down into the old vaulted cellar, built in 1835, where a row of old fiberglass-reinforced wine tanks still stand. "They're good for red wine because they let more air through than stainless steel," says Philipp. "I love coming down here with guests; it's so much more interesting for them."

The GRP tanks will soon make way for barrique barrels. At Bernhard-Räder, they preserve old traditions and are open to new ideas at the same time. Since 2011, Philipp Räder has been running the wine cellar, and in 2010, the family converted their entire 25 hectares to organic viticulture. "Herbicides and pesticides damage the soil," says Philipp. Now the vines grow more slowly but more steadily. "Everything is much more in balance," says Philipp, adding that the wines are more durable and can be drunk for longer. "More authentic," interjects mother Ulla, "perhaps also rounder and more natural in taste."

In 1987, Ulla Bernhard and her husband Rüdiger Räder shifted the winery’s focus largely to bottled wine sales, and with the fall of the Berlin Wall, they really took off again: Suddenly, they had connections to Chemnitz—friends and customers there—and they wanted to see where the wine came from. So in 1991, the Bernhard-Räders opened their first guest rooms. “It was simply necessary,” says Ulla. Today, the five guest rooms reflect the colors of Rheinhessen and the charm of winemaking; the vacation apartment is dedicated to Aunt Johanna, whose furniture characterizes the small, peaceful rooms.

It has always been the women through whom the winery has been passed down, ever since the first house was built in 1818. The foundations, however, are older; a path through thick medieval walls leads us into the garden. “There used to be a tower here,” Ulla explains, “our ancestors built on the walls of a castle.” Beyond the passageway, a spacious, beautiful garden opens up; we enjoy the rosé next to the strawberries. There are beds here with tea herbs, herbs for meat and vegetables—and Bach flower remedies.

The next wine is poured at the Summstein, a tall column with a small, round dome that reflects the humming sound. "When you hit the fundamental tone, the stone begins to speak," says Ulla, and indeed, it works. "Taste, smell, see, and hear—we want to appeal to all the senses," says my hostess with a smile. Next to the garden, the new wine cellar is currently under construction, with production scheduled to start here in 2017. A large, flat window will then allow a view from the garden directly into the cellar – and back. "That's part of our project," says Ulla: "The glass winery."