“When your first name is Jakob, you have no choice but to go into the family business,” says Jakob Schneider Jr. with a charming smile, the youngest in a long line of Weingut Jakob Schneiders in the Nahe region of Germany.
In his mid-twenties, Jakob is an enthusiastic, engaging, strong-shouldered individual who comes across as an icon for the new winemaking generation of Germany, most of whom have been educated in enology and are bringing modern winemaking practices to their family wine estates. Of course, Jakob was lucky enough to have been born into a family that owns two prized hectares of Niederhauser Hermannshohle, one of the most legendary vineyards in the region. In Germany, soil is the key to quality wine, so if all goes according to plan, the family has essentially been given a license to print money.
Jakob, however, is not one to rest on his laurels. He works hard, during harvest almost twenty hours a day, and finds it difficult to find workers who share his dedication. When he tried to recruit some of his former classmates at the wine university Geisenheim, they found the work too taxing and the hours too intense. “A lot of my former classmates went on to cushy marketing jobs,” he tells me with a laugh.
The Schneider family has been making wine since 1575, an eternity by American standards. Curious to know if any family relics remain, Jakob is quick to jump up and show me an ancient family bible from a cabinet, its leather cover bent with age, its pages yellowed and weathered. Almost as old as the family bible is the cellar, the ancient, rounded, stone entrance of which looks like the Hollywood set of a horror film. Yet this juxtaposition of old (the bible, the cellar) and the new (stainless steel tanks, glass wine closures) is what makes Weingut Schneider so interesting and fun to watch.
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