At the end of the 17th century, the Huguenot Nickel Schappert traveled from the Loire, through what is now Saarland and the Southwest Palatinate, to the Nahe Valley. It was Count Palatine Gustav Samuel Leopold of Zweibrücken who, in 1696, appointed the religious refugee Nickel Schappert as the “Antesberg farm manager.” Nickel Schappert owed his remarkable rise to his knowledge of agriculture and livestock farming, but above all to his expertise in winemaking.

It is precisely this old family tradition that inspires Felix Nickel Schappert today to elevate the cultivation of cépages nobles in Sponheim to the highest level.