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We (Ms jb, actually) discovered the Kühling-Gillot winery in Bodenheim (hsaajfm) sometime back in the late 1980s.

There was an ad in the local rag announcing the opening – for 1 day only that year – of “The somewhat different winebar”

And different it is.

The majority of winebars in Bodenheim are in the courtyard of the wineries lining the main drag, food is standard cold cuts/cheese platter stuff and the wine’s cheap. (The #1 back in those days hovered around the DM1.20-1.40 mark)

Roland Gillot and his wife Gabi Kühling live in a late 19thC villa set in a large garden with established trees that gets close to park-like dimensions.

With a pavilion made of Art Deco elements from elevator cages that Roland rescued from a scrapyard by pure chance.

So the winebar took off fairly rapidly, the following year they extended the season to 8 weeks, the villagers popped their nose around the door, saw that #1 started at DM2.50 and disappeared to be replaced by the rest of us who enjoyed the surroundings, the company and good wine.

They’ve kept true to the concept of quality over the years and their better wines are in the eye-watering €40 a bottle range.

Roland’s moved into an advisory role and his daughter Caroline (whom we first met as a littlie in white cotton socks and sandals, helping out serving food) has taken over together with her husband Oliver (who is the heir to the Battenfeld-Spanier winery).

Built a stunningly modern tasting/function room with barrique storage. Flash as a rat with a gold tooth

2 kids, nicest couple and Caroline hasn’t changed a bit.

Good to see.

07 Nov This entry was published on 7 November, 2010 at 12:00. It’s filed under Culinary, Mainz and tagged Bodenheim, Kühling-Gillot. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.