For some sixty years, .17 hectares of grapevines in the Ried Roterd provided the emotional connexion of the Muhr family to Prellenkirchen. Cultivating the vines and picking the grapes, Grandmother Muhr met up again with the friends of her youth.

The harvest was an event that the entire family enjoyed, even if it was concluded in the matter of just a few hours. The wine from the tiny parcel filled four little casks, which over the years were drained with friends at the infamous ‘cellar parties’. As the vines of the old vineyard gradually died off, Franz Muhr rooted them up entirely and left the fields lying fallow.

Dorli Muhr – who discovered her enthusiasm for wine during university studies training as an interpreter (French & Spanish) – founded an agency for marketing and PR work in 1991 called Wine&Partners and developed a highly specialised business for communications involving wine, gourmet products and the culinary world.

The desire to have her own wine production – which burned in the blood of farmers’ daughter Dorli – led ultimately to her replanting the fallow parcels on the Spitzerberg in 1995. Together with her then-husband Dirk van der Niepoort, Dorli Muhr recommenced wine production in 2002. Seeking perfection and maximum finesse, she began to acquire other parcels of vines to complement the family patch, so that the Weingut Muhr-van der Niepoort grew continually each year, in both quantity and quality.

Ten years after Muhr and Niepoort ended their marriage, they finally concluded their business relationship. Dorli Muhr took over Dirk Niepoort’s holdings, and is carrying on with the estate under her name alone. At the same time, she was able to acquire a small, old house in Prellenkirchen and move her business headquarters there. Together with her daughter Anna, she is returning to the same village where Anna’s great-grandmother spent her childhood and teenage years.