EVA FRICKE: Twenty Years of Reinventing the Rheingau

By Stuart Pigott - last revision: 11.09.26

The first time wemet, Eva Fricke sat there silently listening into my discussion with Hajo Becker at the J.B.Becker winery in Niederwalluf/Rheingau on the 20th November, 2003. I’d already been following the Beckers for almost 20 years, a period during which the Rheingau struggled to set a new course or return to the old one that it drifted off long before. Hajo Becker was and remains a lone wolf winegrower, and I was visiting to taste the latest installment of his unique vision of Rheingau Riesling. If, as I left, you’d told me that within a decade that Hajo's new employee from the North of Germany would become one of the nation’s most dynamic quality wine producers, then I might have answered, "who?"

Flash Forward to just eight years ago and you tell me that Eva Fricke will shortly take over a vineyard in Eltville - far removed from the most highly regarded location in the Rheingau - and in the autumn of 2026 I would give a wine from those vines 100 points, then I'd still be sceptical, possibly answering, „really?“ But that’s exactly what happened. The Eva Fricke Rheingau Riesling Etville Collection Dry 2025 is one of the most extraordinary dry white wines I ever tasted. Of course, this begs the question: how on earth all of this was possible ?

It seems I'm not alone in asking myself this question, and that many years ago members of the Rheingau wine industry started asking themselves this question about Eva. Some of them - all men - did so because they were unable to believe that a woman from outside their homeland could achieve such great success and receiving such high accolades, but they did not. Their thinking was marinated in concentrated envy. In order to avoid the conclusion that her talent and commitment were greater than theirs, they turned to obstructing and denigrating her. Friedrich Nietzsche called people who are totally gripped by envy tarantulas. I see something totally different from them: a tireless striving for excellence persued with the greatest determination over 20 years since she founded the Eva Fricke winery with the 2006 vintage.

Her initial focus on Lorch in the forgotten Northwest of the region was in good part a pragmatic descision, since it was relatively easy and cheap to obtain old vineyards there. Today it is sometimes posssible to lease or buy land in the legendary vineyard sites of the Rhingau, but 20 years ago that was impossible. Eva's plots in the Krone, or crown, site of Lorch was one of the most important elements of the Lost World of Lorch Riesling that a handful of winemakers rediscovered. They all shared her fascination with the sleek brilliance and intense stony personality of these wines.

Already the Eva Fricke Rheingau Riesling Krone trocken 2007 was a remarkable wine of exactly this kind, but that was only the beginning of the long journey to her 2025 vintage wines. And although Lorch remains the main focus of her activity, the winery was never based there. By the time of my first visit more than fifteen years ago she was based in the Kötherhof, a historic building in Kiedrich. Then, in August 2015 she moved into her current unspectacularly modern location on the edge of Eltville. These too were pragmatic decisions and improvisations of a kind that the Rheingau tarantulas would never have considered themselves, according to the motto: "but, that's impossible!"

However true all the above is, it isn't adequate to explain the pure inspiration of wines like the Eva Fricke Rheingau Riesling Etville Collection Dry 2025. You see, allthe above ignores the most crucical aspect of Eva Fricke’s story: the way the goal she persued was never exactly defined, and became ever more open-ended, until it was a journey into the unknown. How often does each of us say to ourselves, "this is possible, but that's impossible!“ Each of us has at a tiny tarantula inside us. Of course, it's very difficult to set sail in a particular direction and THROW AWAY THE MAPS - which in this context are the preconceptions of what wines can be produced where and how - then to unwaveringly accept the destination you reach after a long and arduous journey, regardless what it looks, sounds, feels, smells and tastes like. This is what the frequently discussed and so seldom defined "low-intevention winemaking" means when it is undertaken in a thoroughly uncompromising way, as Eva Fricke does.

NOTE: Only for paying subscribers the notes for all 22 wines I tasted can be found below.