Eating and sleeping
Rune Aresvik: We stayed in the Hotel Nicilay zur Post in Zeltingen, which can be highly recomended: very friendly, nice rooms, swimming pool and sauna (nice after walking 20km through the wineyards), very good food and an excellent choice of wine. We went through their seven course dinner, of which the main course was deer. They suggested a red wine, but were very happy when we insisted on a white. We ended up with a Selbach-Oster Zeltinger sonnenuhr Auslese * from 1992, which went very well indeed with the food.
Tom Cannavan: The hotel Richetershof in Mulheim is very comfortable 4* with moderate prices, and has an excellent restaurant: the Culinarium R, where we had a fantastic tasting menu, matched to local white and red wines. Certainly amongst the best food I’ve had in Germany.
Wine and things to do
Rune Aresvik: We had hoped to visit Selbach-Oster, but they were unfortunately away for the week-end. Saturday we went walking through the wineyards from Zeltingen to Urzig, where we wanted to visit J.J. Christoffel. The vineyards have been taken over by Monchoff, and indeed, all the Christoffel wines were sold out. We ended up tasting the Monchof range of 2001 wines which were very nice as well, and ended up buying 24 bottles. On Sunday, we decided to drop by” Reinhold Haart, and were completely seduced by his range of wines (he is also an extremely friendly guy, who did not mind (too much) that we arrived one day late on Sunday morning). Again, we ended up buying too much wine, stuffing the car full, and driving back to Holland with 114 bottles of wonderful Riesling in the boot.
Richard Brooks: I had a great time tasting at Willi Schaefer, amazing wines and a very small and friendly operation, and you can just walk right up into beautiful vineyards from there… Dr Thanish was not so good, Dr Loosen was fine but you get the feeling they see many more people
Rudi Finkler: the castles are worth visiting, the ruined castle Burg Landshut (there is a nice café/restaurant), and the impressive Reichsburg in Cochem.
Russ Sainty: We rented bikes from Traben and cycled to BernKastel and took the boat back, very easy and flat. You can also walk over the headland, but didn’t do it. There is a good tourist map available of routes.Wine wise you may need to book tastings at the better known places, or try to discover new ones. Loosen’s door was firmly shut for instance, but in little places, like Krov there are many cellars open for an early evening drink and some were very good and not to be found here.