Remembering Hans-Günter Schwarz

Germany's wine world is in mourning. Hans-Günter Schwarz passed away on 21 November 2025 at the age of 84. For decades, Schwarz was arguably the most prominent figure in the German wine scene. He established the international reputation of the Müller-Catoir winery and trained many young winemakers to become top producers. His achievements remain unrivalled to this day.

The idea that a 19-year-old graduate of a viticulture school would become the manager of a large winery would be unthinkable today. But Jakob Heinrich Catoir († 2023), who was just a year older, proved he had a good nose when he recruited Hans-Günter Schwarz, whom he had met during their training together in Veitshöchheim, for his parents' winery Müller-Catoir.

The estate in Haardt an der Weinstraße (now a district of Neustadt an der Weinstraße), which had been in the family since 1744, had been fragmented by inheritance and was in poor economic condition. Schwarz, who began his work in 1961, reacted quickly and immediately initiated measures to consolidate the business and change the range of grape varieties, which included the removal of Silvaner and Portugieser.

Hans-Günther Schwarz remained loyal to his employer for over 40 years, despite receiving more lucrative offers. When he left the winery in 2002, it was considered one of the very best in the world. His last vintage, 2001, was also his greatest.

Although he had long been regarded as a living legend, he always remained very modest and never made a fuss about himself. Even at the height of his success, he liked to stay in the background and focus on his work in the vineyards and with his apprentices.

The native of Alberweiler was not someone who needed to spend hours reading books to understand his vines and the processes of nature. He himself compared his ability to that of a doctor who sees a patient and immediately knows what is wrong with them.

Schwarz always let his intuition guide him. And he could always rely on it. When the Palatinate grape harvest in autumn 2000 was ruined by sour rot and vinegar, he decided to personally check every single grape on the sorting table. Contrary to his usual philosophy of vinification, whole bunch pressing was used that year. Schwarz's decision was met with incomprehension by many of his fellow winegrowers. But his 2000 white wines continued to shine long after most of the others had faded.

He always refused to interfere with the internal structure of his wines. When he harvested dry Riesling Spätlesen with more than eleven grams of acidity per litre in 1996, he bottled them without any correction. They developed magnificently and still amazed tasters ten years later. This was because no one noticed the analytically high acidity in the perfectly balanced wines.

Success did not come easily to Hans-Günter Schwarz. The youngest of six children lost his parents at an early age. He was introduced to winegrowing by his eldest brother and guardian. Even years after his first major successes, the technocrats of the wine world accused him of secretly embellishing his wines and filtering them for more than just sterilisation, contrary to his statements. In their opinion, this high quality could not be achieved through the “controlled inaction” propagated by Schwarz. It was only when the first apprentices joined the business and saw that he was only carrying out a single sterilisation filtration before bottling the wines that the malicious gossip came to its end.

Schwarz saw the work in the cellar as “pure damage control”. Quality is created exclusively in the vineyard, he repeatedly emphasised. It cannot be vinified into the wine in the cellar, especially not with the products of modern food chemistry, the use of which elsewhere leads to pure-tasting but boring wines. Martin Steinmann from Schloss Sommerhausen in Franconia, who spent a year training with Müller-Catoir, still remembers a sentence from his mentor: “If you wash a dirty jacket, it will be clean, but not better.”

Despite supposedly weaker vintages, there was probably not a single mediocre wine during the Schwarz era. Even the Rieslings in the litre bottles, which came from the younger vineyards, had character and were no less suitable for ageing than the dry predicate wines. In line with his philosophy of preserving the natural fruit aromas of the grapes in his wines, he did not limit his attention to Riesling and Pinot Blanc. He demonstrated a particular knack for the bouquet varieties Gewürztraminer, Scheurebe and Muscat.

Then there was Rieslaner. He first encountered this successful 1921 cross between Riesling and Silvaner in Veitshöchheim in the form of a dry, rustic 1953 vintage aged in half barrels, which his fellow trainees turned away from in horror. “The wine wa s not particularly charming,” Hans-Günter Schwarz later admitted with a smile. However, he recognised the great potential of the grape variety, saw the challenge and resolved to devote himself to it intensively one day.

The opportunity arose sooner than he dared to dream. When he resigned from Müller-Catoir, there were five hectares of Rieslaner in production. The grape variety had thus become the second most important grape variety on the estate after Riesling.

Hans-Günter Schwarz brought prestige not only to the grape varieties, but also to some of the Mittelhaardt's single vineyards, which had previously enjoyed only moderate renown. He emphasised that location is important, but it is not the only decisive criterion for quality. For example, Rieslings from Mußbach Eselshaut were almost on a par with those from Haardt Bürgergarten. Excellent, creamy Pinot Blancs came from Hambach Römerbrunnen.

During his retirement, Hans-Günter Schwarz provided free advice to fellow winemakers who asked for his help. To a newcomer from southern Palatinate whose wines were cloudy despite the use of bentonite, he recommended: “If you have a problem with bentonite, just leave it away.” No sooner said than done. From then on, everything ran smoothly in the winery's cellar.

We raise our glasses to arguably the best winemaker this country has ever seen and bid him farewell with one of his best wines, a perfectly expected Rieslaner Trockenbeerenauslese from his greatest and last vintage, 2001.