The white mesh crates were once made for industrial goods; now they serve as shelves for wine bottles. “If you close the front grates, it makes a great display area for paintings,” Katrin Mohr demonstrates. “Heimatdroge” reads a poster next to it, which combines wine bottles with a slightly exasperated Carnival princess—two icons of Rheinhessen.

We’re standing in a wine shop, but one thing in particular catches the eye: art. Small objects in mini-boxes hang on the wall; posters and postcards celebrate Rheinhessen; bottle racks hold stools or decorative items. There’s no doubt about it: here, wine and art merge into a work of art all its own.

“Wine is art” is the motto of Wilmshof, a small winery in Selzen, Rheinhessen, south of Mainz. The motto perfectly captures why Katrin and Tobias Mohr won the 2017 Great Wine Capital Award: a unique fusion of the art of winemaking with art itself, celebrating a “new aesthetic” and a holistic approach, as the jury raved. That’s probably what happens when the winemaker himself is an artist and his wife is an interior designer. “This is our second career,” says Katrin Mohr with a smile. 

She was studying interior design in Mainz when she met her future husband—on Rosenmontag, of all days. Tobias Mohr was an artist who later taught as a lecturer at the university, and after a few years of student life, the couple moved to Selzen, to Katrin’s parents’ winery. “We’d help out on the weekends,” Katrin recalls, “and somehow, the whole wine thing just crept up on us.”

Dagmar and Werner Binzel owned a typical Rheinhessen winery, eight hectares in size, with 38 hectares of farmland on the side. The winery was actually a dying business, as neither of their two daughters wanted to take it over. "I always resisted it a little," says Katrin, but at some point she realized, "you can do things differently than your parents..." And so the artists, drawn into the art of winemaking, became winemakers themselves: Tobias became a master winemaker and manager, and Katrin poured her creative talent into designing posters, decorations, and wine events.

Today, they make a clear Riesling and a wonderful floral Gewürztraminer. Tobias and Katrin planted St. Laurent and Chardonnay and began making wines that reflect the terroir and their own taste. And yet – art could not be suppressed. Large pictures of soccer players' legs hang in the wine cellar, left behind after a wine tasting.

"We had an after-work event here during the European Soccer Championship last year," explains Katrin, while Tobias read texts from a catalog he once created for an exhibition on soccer and art. The soccer players' legs still hang next to crates and forklifts, while next door in the wine shop, a small series called "Soccer Players in Space" sits on the shelf, right next to the wine coolers.

"We make a different wine coaster every year," says Katrin Mohr, pointing to the various editions of the small round coasters, each one, of course, a little work of art. “We try to incorporate art into every aspect of our daily lives,” says the hostess, pointing to the small matchboxes that serve as Christmas gifts and are, of course, filled with art.

Even the shopping bags are printed with artistic portraits; the original “ugly drinkers” hang in the “Kuhkapelle”—the former cowshed that Dagmar and Werner Binzel converted into their first wine bar. The cross-vaulted ceiling and the thick stone pillars are reminiscent of a chapel, which is how the “Kuhkapellen” in Rheinhessen got their name.

"My parents were the first to run a wine tavern," Katrin recalls, "and in the beginning, they would often sit here alone in the evenings, waiting to see if anyone would come." That was in 1986, and Rheinhessen wasn’t yet the tourist paradise it is today. The few guests back then were invited into the living room and often stayed for a meal. Today, cyclists and day-trippers are happy to ring the wine shop’s bell at all hours of the day to buy a bottle or two of wine.

Today, the Straußwirtschaft is a large wine tavern that includes an incorporated barn, where Katrin serves regional cuisine. Three years ago, Tobias and Katrin converted the double garage facing the street into an art-inspired wine shop. “Art was always there in some way,” says Katrin, “but it was the shop that made us realize it.” While searching for a name, they came up with the motto “Wine is Art”—and that sparked a veritable wave of art at the winery. “Making wine isn’t all that different from creating art,” she adds. “Both simply appeal to all the senses.”