The founder hangs on the wall. "Yes, Josef Neus is always watching us," says Lewis Schmitt, leading me to the slender Art Nouveau stone drinking fountain in the back room of the Victorian villa, right in the heart of Ober-Ingelheim. Old panels line the walls, also original, but at the front of the building, a state-of-the-art wine shop awaits us. The new rooms, the combination of old and new, together with the beautiful park – this is precisely why the J. Neus winery received the Best of Wine Tourism Award 2018 in the Architecture, Parks and Gardens category.

"Neus Senior created his cuvées at this fountain, and we still work here today," says Schmitt. The elegant drinking fountain is fed by its own spring, and the old heating system in the hallway was once the first of its kind in Ingelheim – the Neussens were pioneers of modernity in the 19th century. "Neus Senior was enthusiastic about Pinot Noir, which is why he came to Ingelheim," says Schmitt.

This small town, nestled behind the Great Wine Capital of Mainz, has been a red wine enclave for centuries. Charlemagne once founded one of his famous imperial palaces here, and since the Middle Ages, red Burgundy has been grown on the sandy and limestone slopes of the surrounding area. “80 percent Pinot Noir,” Schmitt replies promptly when asked about the winery’s most important grape variety. In Rheinhessen, the land of Riesling and Silvaner, the Ingelheimers’ true calling lies in red wine.

On the wall, an old certificate tells of a bronze medal that Josef Neus won for one of his wines at the famous World’s Fair of 1900. During the Victorian era, when German wines were famous and sought-after worldwide, the Neus family’s creations were also among the very best. The family even owned the famous Queen Victoria Vineyard in Hochheim, dating back to 1917.

"Neus was the son of a well-to-do cooper family from the Moselle region," says Schmitt. In 1881, he founded a wine trading company in Ingelheim. The first vineyards were established, so Neus also founded a winery in 1894. He had already built the beautiful Art Nouveau villa with its park, vineyard, and outbuildings in 1883, as well as the huge underground cellars.

"You can walk around in a square here," says Schmitt as we wander through the large underground realm. Ancient cellar flora covers the vaulted ceiling in the spacious rooms, and wooden barrels line the walls – ranging from modern French barrique barrels to ancient oak barrels from the Moselle region. In one corridor, ancient champagne bottles are stacked in a niche in the wall, thickly covered with dust and cobwebs. "That's rosé sparkling wine, decades old and no longer fit for consumption," says Schmitt. It is one of the many legacies of the old owners, as are the old iron shelves, full of ancient bottles.

In 2012, the Schmitz family of entrepreneurs from Mainz, owners of the G.L.Kayser shipping company, took over the J. Neus winery – at the last minute. Ulrich Burchards, the last descendant of the old Neus family, had no heirs for the winery himself and wanted to sell. "This was supposed to become a residential park with 26 residential units, and the cellar was to be turned into an underground parking garage," says Schmitt, "everything had already been approved." Literally at the last minute, the Schmitz family saved the winery – and began the revival of this gem. "The winery was in a deep slumber," says Schmitt.

The 27-year-old bachelor of international wine management joined the J. Neus winery two years ago as operations manager. His parents have a small winery on the Ahr, "I live Pinot Noir," says Schmitt. As a team, they now want to restore the Neus wines to their former greatness and glory. The Pinot Noirs are already deep red wines with an intense berry aroma, wood notes, and the rich minerality of the shell limestone soils. "We want to bring Pinot Noir back to its former glory," says Schmitt, "the winery simply deserves it—the walls here are steeped in too much history for that not to be the case."