Tucked away at the end of a quiet side valley of the Nahe, the tiny village of Auen looks more like a storybook hamlet than the home of one of Germany’s most exciting new names. Yet from this secluded spot, the Hees family have been crafting wine for almost 200 years, and today ninth‑generation winemaker Marcus Hees is putting both his village and his family estate firmly back on the map.
A family rooted in Auen
There is a village on the upper Nahe called Auen, tucked so far back into the Soonwald forest that the locals describe it, fondly, as the place "where the fox and the hare say goodnight." Drive up the Auener valley and you find quiet, steep slopes, woodland, and a single family still making wine here. That family is the Heeses, and the fact that they are the last winegrowers left in Auen tells you almost everything about how they work.
The Hees family has been farming vines in this spot since 1824. Marcus Hees is the ninth generation, and he is, quite literally, the only winemaker in the village - the sole keeper of viticulture in the particular microclimate of the Auener Tal. That is not a marketing line dressed up as heritage. It is a man who took on a remote, difficult, half-forgotten corner of the Nahe and decided it was worth the effort of bringing back to life.
A Family Business
Behind the label sit four names: Anita, Guido, Marcus and Sabrina. Together with their team they run not just a winery but a whole small world in Auen - the Weingut for the wine, the Essgut for the food, and the Schlafgut for the rooms. The family restaurant, a proper country inn called Zum Jäger aus Kurpfalz, serves regional specialities to walkers and hunters coming in off the Soonwald trails, while guest rooms let visitors slow right down and stay a while. It is hands-on in the most literal sense: cellar, kitchen, rooms and service, all run by the same family, "authentic and real," as they put it, with a lot of heart and an eye for detail.
That blend of hospitality and winemaking is the connection to the town made physical. In a place this small and this hidden, the Heeses are not simply based in Auen - they are, to a large extent, what keeps Auen on the map.
The vineyards
The Hees sites are mostly high-altitude very steep slopes with a long growing season and late ripening. Framed by forest, the hillsides above Auen climb to gradients of up to 60% and face due south, on soils of weathered sandstone and clay slate. The cooler, stonier, steeper parcels are reserved entirely for Riesling; the plots with more clay and loam go to Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc). At up to around 300 metres above sea level, this is a genuinely cool corner of the Nahe, with a microclimate that lets the grapes hang and ripen often well into November. Across the generations, the family has chosen to put its main focus on Riesling and Pinot Blanc precisely because both find, in their words, their perfect conditions here - climatically and geologically.
Marcus has also reached beyond his home valley to one of the Nahe's truly great names: the Monzinger Halenberg, a famous, top-tier site closer to the river, where lean soils shot through with blue slate and quartzite seem almost to demand Riesling. Much of his work is about patiently re-cultivating old, carefully chosen vineyard plots and making them productive again - the unglamorous, multi-year graft that real terroir asks for.
How the wines are made
Marcus does not follow the standard playbook, and says so plainly. He works on principle with low yields and a late, fully ripe harvest, picking selectively by hand. In the vineyard, the year runs to at least eleven separate manual passes - pruning, bending, de-budding, tucking, topping, leaf-pulling, hand-harvest - hard, physical work that he carries out personally. In the cellar the same exacting standard applies: spontaneous fermentation with wild yeasts, minimal intervention, and a deliberately late bottling, giving the wine the time it genuinely needs rather than the time a schedule allows.
The results are racy, crunchy, mineral Rieslings of real depth, and Pinot Blancs with a lasting, creamy texture and delicate notes of citrus and peach. What he is chasing, above all, are three qualities: finesse, depth and the ability to age. Unmistakable, characterful and headstrong - which is exactly how the family describes their own wines.
How they're performing - at home and abroad
For a one-man, one-village operation, the recognition has been remarkable. Marcus Hees has earned top marks from Germany's most important critics - Gault & Millau, Falstaff and the Vinum Wine Guide among them - and in October 2019 the influential critic Stephan Reinhardt named him Newcomer of the Year, a serious moment of arrival for a grower this far off the beaten track.
That reputation now travels well beyond the Nahe. Here in the UK, Weingut Hees has quickly become a benchmark name on our own virtual shelves: of the eleven wines in the range, six carry scores of 90+ points, climbing to 96 for the dry Riesling Auener Höhe, the single-vineyard Monzinger Halenberg and the Römerstich Kabinett, with the Riesling Sekt and the Steingewann Pinot Blanc close behind. Several have become Staff Picks and Vivino favourites. Not bad for a cool, hidden valley that almost no one outside the Soonwald had heard of a decade ago.
People's favourite: Dry Riesling 2024
My favourite: Dry Riesling Monzinger Halenberg 2023
Buy Weingut Hees's wines here.
Cheers!
Jon Cellier | Wine Director