We are delighted to have won the Russian artist Lada Chizhova to design the artist’s label for our 2023 Berg Schlossberg.

Lada Chizhova was born in Siberia in 1991. She lived in Moscow and St Petersburg until she left Russia in 2022 with her husband and two daughters as a political migrant and moved to Mannheim.

In her work as an illustrator and author, Lada Chizhova collaborates with large and small brands, magazines and social projects. She develops digital and analogue illustrations and also works on independent artistic projects alongside her commercial work. Her work is characterised by the exploration of three central themes: Movement, play and (apparent) lightness.

For the label of the 2023 Berg Schlossberg, Chizhova chose the technique of analogue collage. This technique is particularly open to constructive work with ‘mistakes’ and the resulting skillful improvisation. Lada Chizhova sees a certain parallel here to wine production – a carefully controlled process that is influenced by parameters such as soil conditions or the weather, whereupon the winemaker must find a creative way of dealing with these factors using expertise, timing and feeling.

In her collage for the 2023 Berg Schlossberg, Lada Chizhova has captured some essential natural elements that she found particularly memorable in the vineyards where this wine grows: the Rhine flowing between the hilly banks planted with vines, the mist enveloping the river and its banks, the very wide sky above the Rhine and the rare chicory and wildflowers that grow along the vineyard paths. In the midst of this rhythmically arranged landscape, which, according to Chizhova, is a tale of the ‘dissonance of the great sky and the small land, of the union of man and nature and their competition’, we find man and dog – dancing, light-footedly scrambling, participating.

Berg Schlossberg is undisputedly the top vineyard in Rüdesheim. With up to 65% steep terraces, these vineyards require a great deal of craftsmanship in cultivation. Only the very best batches from the harvest are bottled under the site designation ‘Berg Schlossberg’.

‘Unobtrusive, subtle, elegant with an interplay of flavours of mandarin peel, red apple, apple blossom and white peach. Slender and dancing on the palate with a very firm centre. Clear as a bell and straightforward. – The best wines – Riesling dry 2023, 5 out of 5 grapes’
– Gault & Millau, Wine Guide Germany 2025

We are delighted to announce that Dutch artist Martijn van Berkum (born 1976) is the designer behind the artist’s label of our 2022 Berg Schlossberg.

Martijn van Berkum studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and at the Valand Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has participated in various collaborative art projects and lives with his family in Rotterdam. Van Berkum’s primary artistic medium is drawing. In his work, he deals with a wide variety of architectural structures, which he translates into his own visual language after a thorough analysis. The resulting interpretations show an architecture devoid of all functions – van Berkum develops spaces and material arrangements that make reference, then, allegedly, exist only for their own purpose and, as it were, highly auratically in the paper space. The artist is interested in the creative and subversive potential of these functionally empty architectural structures.
For the design of the artist’s label for the 2022 Berg Schlossberg, Martijn van Berkum partially suspends the principle of “non-functional structures” that characterizes his work: in wine production everything is connected for him. In the lower and upper areas of van Berkum’s partially colored drawing, there is a system of roots and branches representing the natural factors of climate and soil conditions. In the middle of the picture, the colors flowing from below and above mix: “[…] the cellar work focuses on understanding the different vineyards and parcels and how they can be vinified and blended to form an expression of terroir. As such, the drawing represents the tension that is typical for Breuer’s wines: on the one hand the result of the whimsical character of nature and vintage, on the other hand the product of a man-made, precise articulation of place.” (Martijn van Berkum, February 2024).

Undisputedly, the Berg Schlossberg is Rüdesheim’s top vineyard. With up to 65% steep terraces, these vineyards require a lot of craftsmanship in cultivation. Only the very best lots of the harvest are bottled under the site designation “Berg Schlossberg”.

Ratings: Vinum Weinguide Deutschland 2024: 93 points; Eichelmann 2024 – Deutschlands Weine: 93 points

“Firm and deep, herbaceous and tobacco, a hint of smoky nose with yellow-fruity, nutty and delicately floral aromas, a trace of dried mushrooms, mussel shells, delicate barrel tones and minerality. Cool, very tightly knit, finely juicy and yet completely dry fruit, very fine, lively acidity and some grip, nutty barrel tones, dried vegetal to herbaceous notes, dense and persistent on the palate, good depth, lots of stony minerality, almost compact structure, yet also has something light-footed, very good to long, extremely firm finish with noble juice, fine spice and again plenty of minerality. – 96 out of 100 WP” – Weinplus 2024

At regular intervals we would like to publish diary excerpts from Bernhard Breuer’s notes here.
Bernhard Breuer led the Georg Breuer winery to international renown from the early 1970s until his sudden death in May 2004. With high standards, he was committed to the maximum possible quality of wine as well as the close link between wine and culture. From 1999 to 2004 Bernhard Breue wrote an online diary in which he recorded the everyday life of a winemaker and reported about his journeys that brought him all around the globe.

Get into Bernhard Breuer’s Wine Diaries 1999.
Here you can find all the other diary entries for download as a PDF.

Since 2016 we are part of the grape exchange project “Wurzelwerk”: during harvest the estates Jurtschitsch, Kamptal in Lower Austria, Gunderloch, Rheinhessen, and Georg Breuer provide one another with grapes from one of their top sites and start exploring the terroir: how does a vineyard express itself in a foreign cellar? What gives the tone?

The first vintage of the project “Wurzelwerk” that was developed in team with Georg Breuer is now available and can be purchased in our vinotheque as well as over the homepage of Wurzelwerk.