Griesel was born in 2013 in an old traditional winery located in the centre of the small town of Bensheim in the Hessische Bergstraße, carved into a hill called ‘Griesel’. Niko Brandner, partner and director of the estate started in 2014 to buy a few old vineyards around Bensheim on soils with very high potential, mainly granite: the vineyards here are very small, sometimes steep and very diverse and require a lot of manual work. The grapes are harvested by hand and after the whole bunches have been pressed, the first fermentation takes place spontaneously as for malolactic fermentation. Secondary fermentation in the bottle strictly follows the classic method, with long stays on the lees. The winery concentrates on Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Meunier and Riesling and the winemaking style is low-intervention, trying to avoid any filtration or clarification of the wine, and both dosages and quantities of sulphites are always very low. The desire of Niko and his team is to produce pure, terroir-oriented sparkling wines that aim for the paradox of being light and complex at the same time.