RHINE-WINE indicates, strictly speaking, the wines produced in the Rheingau (q.v.), the most valued and costly being those of Castle Johannisberg, Hochheim (whence the word Hock, applied in England promiscuously to all white Rhine wines), Rüdesheim, Steinberg, Gräfenberg, Ranenthal, Marcobrunn, Assmannshausen, and Geisenheim. Except the wine of Assmannshausen (Assmannshäuser), which is red, these wines are of a white or light golden colour, and have an exquisite bouquet and a dry piquant flavour. In a wider sense the term Rhine-wine includes the wines of nearly all the valleys lying contiguous to the Rhine—those of Baden, Alsace, the Moselle, Hesse-Nassau, and the Palatinate.
See the illustrated Rhine, by K. Stieler (Eng. trans. 1878; new ed. 1887); the guidebooks of Murray and Baedeker; Simrock's Rheinsagen (9th ed. 1883) and Das malerische und romantische Rheinland (4th ed. 1865); and the history of the river from Celtic to modern times, by Mehls (3 vols. Berlin, 1876-79).