🇩🇪 Moselle Valley - Nittel & Nennig - Vintage Llamas

Nittel

Our next stay was in the beautiful wine village of Nittel. Nittel is situated on the Moselle River between a high limestone gorge surrounded by an abundance of vineyards to roam.

Our accommodation had a very relaxed feel. It was spacious with one window looking over the impressive gorge and vineyards and the balcony looking over the village.

This town oozed simplicity and rural charm. The riches of the back to basics simple life was in the air.

After a well deserved restful sleep Rob and I took the local dirt path past rural properties with their well maintained chicken houses that lead us into the village. Here residential houses blended in beside local well established wine cellar after wine cellar. It was so refreshing to walk through Nittel and discover that there was no huge commercial signage, no supermarket or small grocery store, no retail therapy shops of any kind or even a petrol station or news agency. We did find a great town bakery and a bakery truck who rolls through the town ringing his bell like the old fashion milk truck selling his wares. There were an abundance of bio prestige wineries and restaurants on the roadside curb. A quaint creek has carved its way for centuries through Nittel which added to the tranquility of our slow walk through the town.

This town is all about the good life we brought some freshly baked bread, local ham and freshly ground coffee beans from the bakery and we skip further along to explore rural life. Rob spots a hair dresser in a residential street and with his naivety thought he might able to get a quick well needed haircut. We were met by a very polite German hairdresser who tried ever so gently to inform us that even in this small village she was booked up for the next 2 weeks due to the high amount of children about to embark on their holy communion. We were thinking you could make a good living over here being a hairdresser.

We also eagerly like stalkers checked out the very quaint local village school. I was envious of the enormously large classroom windows which allowed the natural healthy sunlight to stream into their classrooms. It was wonderful to see similar displays hanging and students exploring and working cooperatively.

We spent a wonderful afternoon hiking through the peaceful vineyards on a educational wine trail set out with sign boards that allowed us to learn about all the different grapes and wines produced locally. Nittel is the most important wine producing town in the Upper Moselle River.

On our walk we also enjoyed the views of the gorge, vineyards, the village below us and the picturesque Moselle River .

As the sun set we were inspired by our vineyard walk so we went to buy some local wine to sample at our leisure. What else was there to do when we are staying in a prestigious German wine town on the Moselle River that is famous for its wines?

I have to say I have never been a big wine drinker home in Australia, but the wines that we have sampled in Tuscany, the French wine regions of the Alsace and here in Nittel are of another calibre. I have a new found hobby!!! Rob is loving that he can share in my new found hobby. Our Germany wine was grown in a Mediterranean micro climate, we are hoping for some of this feel good weather. Anyway it was a delicious feel good wine (the feel good suns rays were bottled and passed on to the sampler – this is only way we are going to get our vitamin D for the time being). Our German local wine Albus – had a great forest foliage flavour and it came at a low price as we were purchasing it straight from its home grown town.

Our apartment was owned and run by a local vineyard called Beck Vineyards who produces a local Bio wine which is very impressive! We realised as an Australian tourist Nittel was a true gem as it was more a village where Germans would come for a weekend away for wine tasting as all brochures in our apartment were in German, no English, so we had really stepped off the tourist map.

We relaxed over great views, local quality wine and a 1000 piece vintage countries poster puzzle we had purchased. We were in our puzzling zone in flow mixing one hobby with another! We definitely know how to party!!!!

On our second day in Nittel we were off to find a new a adventure!! This is what makes travel so refreshing!

Roman Villa in Nennig

This was a treat for us as we had got excited when we first viewed a mosaic floor in Paestum an Ancient Greek city on the coastline of Italy.

This was a enormously lavish brightly coloured detailed mosaic floor in immaculate condition. It is one of the most important of its time as it is viewed on its original site.

A farmer stumbled across it whilst working on his land back in 1852. What a find, the Roman mosaic is dated back to the 3rd century AD!!! The excavation sight uncovered a palatial villa whose size makes it one of the most opulent of its kind in the provinces of the Roman Empire. The mosaic floor which would have stood in the reception hall is 160 square meters. The 6 mosaic octagonal medallions provide scenes of what life was like as a gladiator in the amphitheater.

The Gladiators