Wineries and wine villages to marvel at

The wine lives so beautiful

Their architecture alone is turning more and more wine estates into places of interest. Stuffy tasting rooms are a thing of the past – instead, modern winemakers are opting for a feel-good ambience with fresh architecture. More and more winemakers are hiring talented master builders so that their magical Rieslings can be served in fitting surroundings. After all, tasting is what we want, and with the successful combination of wine and architectural culture, the enjoyment on your palate becomes an experience for all the senses.

Romantic, picturesque and brimming with history: our hand-picked towns and villages have a host of unmissable wine-growing and architectural treasures in store!

Via mosel’ invites you to discover the most beautiful wine estates and villages in the borderless Moselle Valley in Germany, Luxembourg and France.

Discover the Via mosel`

Discover architectural highlights at the Mosel!

Our tour tips:

Portes Ouvertes Via mosel'

wine architecture weekend from 05 to 06 April 2025!

Along the German-Luxemburgish-French Mosel, the via mosel' wineries and wine villages always open their doors and offer a diverse program for all wine & architecture lovers!

What do you think of a culinary art nouveau tour through Traben Trarbach, a wine & pleasure experience in an organic winery in Maring-Noviand or a wine tasting in a modern designed historic remise in Konz-Filzen?

Enjoy great wines in a unique atmosphere and learn exciting background information about the history of the wineries and wine villages.

To the event program

Sebastian Lauff, architect and editor of the online architecture magazine archimag.de saw this for himself on his trip along the Mosel and Saar. His journey took him to five architecturally special wineries; here he shares his experiences of wine, region and architecture.

A discovery tour with architect Sebastian Lauff

Portrait Sebastian Lauff, online Architekturmagazin archimag.de

AUTHOR SEBASTIAN LAUFF: My travels took me from Luxembourg to Koblenz, along the picturesque roads of the Mosel Valley and through the surrounding villages. I visited a number of places and wineries, accompanied by the most beautiful weather, and have selected five fascinating locations to share with you in this article:

The guest house at Weingut Cantzheim

Along the Saar, against the stunning backdrop of the vineyard in Kanzem, stands the late Baroque “Cantzheim” manor.

The building has been renovated and expanded by the Swiss architect Max Dudler within the framework of its existing preservation order. In addition to the manor’s conversion, an orangery and a guest house were also built. The two new buildings stand at a respectful distance from the manor and so provide space for the unobtrusive landscaping of Bernhard Korte. The house, which was built in 1740 as a winery for the Wadgassen Monastery and which was long owned by the Episcopal Seminary of Trier, was acquired by its current owners in 2007.

When asked why the manor was acquired and a building project planned under the strict conditions of a preservation order, the son-in-law and current manager of the winery explained,

My father-in-law always wanted to build.

A personal link with architect Oswald Mathias Ungers resulted in initial discussions. However, Mr Ungers had to decline the planning project due to his age. He did, however, refer his client to his former student Max Dudler. Dudler designed a concept which respects the manor’s baroque structure and removed additions not sympathetic to the period. The original interior structure of the house was not touched, only modernised in keeping with the times.

Technical equipment was completely housed in the new outbuilding.The buildings fit into their environment both in form and the materials used. The walls and the roof of the two-storey outbuilding are made from custom stamped concrete. This reflects the earthy tones of the surrounding hills. The orangery is made of steel and glass and is the monolithic outbuilding’s counterpart. Its filigree structure takes up the verticality of the vines dominating the landscape.

The Weingut Cantzheim estate serves as a guest house, vinothek, events venue and private residence. Three guest rooms and a separately accessible private apartment are located on the upper floor of the manor. Two further guest rooms can be found on the outbuilding’s upper level.

Vinothek Weingut F. J. Regnery

This vinothek was built when the Weingut F. J. Regnery estate was handed over to the next generation. An “old” vinothek existed on the estate but it had remained very 70s in style. Not unattractive as such but customer demands change and something fresh and new needed to be created. However, producing a plan for the remaining available space on the property wasn't easy.

No sharp lines!

This was the brief that Andrea and Peter Regnery gave architect Marco Hoffmann from Wittlich. The result is the new, fascinating vinothek, which was voted one of the TOP 50 vinotheks in Germany by the German Wine Institute in 2016. The architecture was designed to create an ambience of well-being, in which welcoming hosts are able to present first-class wines. The architect designed a barrel-shaped,or more precisely, a droplet-shaped building above the old vaulted cellar, which is clad with oiled, rough-cut oak beams, 6.3 metres in height.

Inside, a sales room with counter, wooden benches and framed illuminated photographs welcomes you. The walls have a clay and read plaster finish, which gives the rooms a uniquely structured look, improves the interior climate and ensures pleasant acoustics. The upper floor has seating for cosy wine tastings and presentations. The upper room and terrace area can be merged to create one open space by means of a folding door. From here, you can enjoy the views of the Riesling and Pinot Noir-producing vineyards on the slopes of the Klüsserather Bruderschaft site.

Winzerhäuschen cottages, WeinKulturgut Longen-Schlöder

A few hours in a vinothek simply isn't enough to enjoy wine and the landscape properly. In fact, the whole experience should include slowing down and enjoying it all. So, Weingut Longen-Schlöder wanted to expand its capacities and create guest cottages. But how do you find the right architect for something like this? For the Longen family, the finding process actually began before they decided on building.

We noticed the same kind of architectural style time and time again. And in most cases, this architecture was associated with Matteo Thun from South Tyrol. So, once we'd made the decision to build, we just wrote Mr Thun an email. And what made us very happy was that we received a reply just a couple of hours later

, the Longen family explains.

They then quickly managed to arrange an initial meeting in Milan to agree on the project’s specifications. Architect Matteo Thun also took care of all details remotely – from the design itself to the use of local materials.The building authority was involved from the start and so 2011 saw the extension of the vinothek and the winery's guest cottages were built in 2011/2012.

The result is a series of holiday cottages made of slate, each with approx. 20 square metres of living space. The holiday homes are bright, clearly laid out and uncluttered. As the 20 cottages stand on an approx. 6,500 square metre plot surrounded by fruit trees, each cottage was able to have its own small, individually themed garden. This ensures that the cottages have a high degree of privacy. Holiday guests can choose between a shaded garden, a simple kitchen garden, an orchard-style garden and a rose garden.

This concept convinced the judges of the 2013 Wine Architecture Prize, who awarded the project first place. As well as offering delicious wines and a quiet space to enjoy some down time, the food here is also excellent. I was able to experience this for myself in form of a light lunch stop on my travels.

Weinwerkstatt Lubentiushof

The Barth family's mission was to create a venue for wine tastings. The career changers don't have centuries of wine-making tradition behind them; instead their Lubentiushofis full of fresh ideas.

The old barn was to be partly demolished and replaced by a wine presentation venue. In contrast to the Upper Mosel area, the valley here is narrow and the plots small. As a result, the building towers with three storeys on 27.5 square metres of land and leans against the existing walls of neighbouring buildings. The old walls are complemented by exposed concrete, steel, glass and wood. This combination of materials was particularly important to the building’s owners.

On the ground floor, this structure creates a room for wine tastings, which faces the small courtyard and can be opened up completely via folding doors. A steel and wood staircase, the design of which takes into account the reduced space available, leads to the upper floor, to the building's office space.

From here, the façade is clad with wood, which protects privacy without restricting the views. The top floor houses overnight accommodation.

Our bathroom here is probably the one with the most beautiful views of the Mosel

, says the owner, who worked as an interior designer before purchasing the winery.

This in turn also explains the extremely precise eye for detail. Every line and every detail has been reconsidered, rejected and rethought a fresh. And yet you don’t notice this in the rooms themselves. There is only a feeling of everything being just right.

It’s important to me that the guests feel comfortable. They shouldn’t see how much work has gone into the details. Instead, they should intuitively feel that everything is right and just as it should be.

Weingut Van Volxem

The last winery is also the newest construction on my journey, whereby the buildings belonging to Weingut Van Volxem, support nothing less than the cultivation of wine in the tradition of Saar wines around 1900. With plenty of idealism and ambition, Roman Niewodniczanski took over the winery in 2000 and has been running it successfully ever since. 2019 saw the opening of a new production facility.

The new production facility is situated in the middle of the estate’s own vineyards in Wiltingen, on the Saar, and was founded on top of an existing wine cellar. Local materials were used for this, especially slate, and the building was carefully integrated into the natural environment, with awareness of the juxtaposition between old and new, i.e the original winery villa on the Wiltinger Schlossberg.

The natural stone plays an important role beyond its exterior appearance. Light shell limestone has been used on the façades of the group of buildings; this meets the highest sustainability standards by not requiring any further treatment.

A group of buildings that shape and enrich the Saar landscape

, says owner Roman Niewodniczanski.

The group of buildings, comprising production facility and presentation venue, were set out in such a way that they effortlessly blend into the natural environment and also meet the needs of production processes. Just like in 1900, this allows cellar master Dominik Völk and his team to work exclusively using the gravity-flow process.

Even though it is only two storeys high, the tower-like monolith is the winery’s iconic building and is designed in the style of the Bismark Tower located on the opposite side of the slope. It is connected below ground with the production facility through a cask cellar, and this creates, almost incidentally, a court yard area with terrace that invites visitors to stop and experience the incredible landscape.

Four key parts of the building work together to gradually win visitors over in favour of the award-winning wine. The vinothek, situated on the ground floor of the monolith, invites guests to enjoy wine tastings. Here, visitors can already experience spectacular panoramic views of the vineyards along the romantic oxbow lake of the Saar.

The panoramic viewing room on the upper floor of the monolith offers even more spectacular views than those of the vinothek. The owner, who took over the entire management of the site as a layman, had an 8.6 metre-wide glass panel made to ensure perfect views.

It weighs 1.8 tonnes. At the beginning I wasn’t sure if such a panel could actually be produced.

The room is intended for tastings and events with star chefs but also for private functions.The cask cellar is the heart of the entire production facility. All walls are entirely made from natural stone and are a nod to characteristic Mosel vineyard walls. The casks, custom-made from wood sourced from forests in the Eifel, are stunning to look at, regardless whether you love wine or not. This leaves the rarity cellar in the monolith’s basement. Here, selected vintages and wines from the best vineyards mature in honeycomb-like tanks over many years to become genuine rarities.

In all of this, ecological and social sustainability are given the highest priority. Through a consistent sustainability-focused approach, the utmost care is taken to protect natural resources in all areas of production. Heat is generated by a wood chip heating system. Almost a matter of course these days is the company’s own generation of electricity via a photovoltaic system, which is discreetly located on the main roof. Even the rain water that falls onto the large roof areas is collected in a nature-inspired pond and utilized.