Cooking wine is commonly established as a category for wine that you do pour into the cook, but above all into the dish, which is then usually braised. But what happens when the cook, given the outside temperature, mutates into a braised dish himself? Does every wine then become cooking wine? Think about that for a while, it’s certainly warm enough. The two bottles, cooking wine or not, are in any case well chilled to stand up to the heat, at least for a while. These aren’t the first two bottles of Knewitz here on the blog, but quite a bit has happened since last time. The most striking change is probably the eagle that now sits on the neck of the bottle. Knewitz has been a member of the VDP since 2022. There are new labels too, though today’s bottles still carry the old ones, which I personally somehow like better than the new ones. A matter of taste. The website seems to be broken at the moment. At least it is for me. So for label comparison pictures, shops or social media will have to do.

I’m fully aware of the absurdity. Just a few weeks ago, I was loudly proclaiming that I had stopped chasing unicorns, that I basically only buy bottles from the Jura that are actually fairly easy to get. And today, this bottle. If you go looking, it’s only available in bundles. The kind of bundles where one bottle is this wine and five bottles are something else. Unicorn alert. In my defense: until Alex’s newsletter, I had never heard the name Nicolas Jacob. Holgi once said on Wrint Podcast that when you read a newsletter like that, you basically always want to buy immediately. No matter which wines are in it. And Holgi is right. So there can be no talk of unicorn hunting. If I believed in root days, this wine wouldn’t have shown up here anyway. It was one of those Friday evenings when you pull one cork after another and nothing sings. Not even the guaranteed singers. But then, then came Les Chazaux. Thank goodness we like to cook. That way, root-day wine gets to live a second life as a sauce. Not a bad fate, after all.

At some point, enough is simply enough. For us, being not exactly big Riesling drinkers at the moment, that point had partly arrived by Saturday evening at the Mythos Mosel weekend. But it also happened to the male half of the older couple staying in the same hotel as us, who was quite the Riesling fanatic. When we crossed paths yet again in Zeltingen late on Sunday afternoon, he just said that he was now going to lie down in bed in his underwear, watch some football and then, back home, pull the cork on a bottle of red wine. He’d had enough of Riesling for now. I feel that. Very much so, in fact, which is why we’re drinking red wine today too. It must be about two years ago by now that this bottle, well, this wine, rather, because it surely won’t have been this actual bottle, crossed my path on so many different, trustworthy channels at practically the same time, and was sung about in the highest tones, that I simply couldn’t do anything but pounce. That was either coincidence, or the coordinator of the operation had honestly earned this purchase.

The plan for day two is simple: we work our way along the bus line that, for us, starts in Zeltingen and ends in Zeltingen too. In concrete terms that means Graach, Schloss Lieser, Wehlen and Zeltingen to finish. How fitting that the day in Graach kicks off with a Kabi warm-up even before 11 a.m. Anyone now wondering what on earth we’re actually doing here would do well to read Day 1. In theory, the journey there on the local transport network would be covered by the ticket too. In practice, Graach may be just one little village over, but on a Sunday morning it’s only reachable by public transport with a change and a wait, or a longish walk to the stop on the other side of the Mosel. So we take the shuttle. Departure as before at 10:12 a.m., and today too we’ll have plenty of luck with the bus.

That after a two-year break we end up, of all places, back in the section around Bernkastel-Kues isn’t exactly great timing. Of 5 visits to Mythos Mosel, three fall in this section. This time, though, we change base and stay not in Brauneberg as on the two previous occasions, but right at the end of the route in Zeltingen-Rachtig. In Rachtig, really, and since there’s no bus stop there, every morning starts with a walk to Zeltingen. But thanks to a bus schedule that this year has the first departure at 10:12, you can theoretically make it to the other end of the section before the 11 o’clock start. Good omens.

A few more weeks and it’s Maxime Open again. This year in Ingelheim, and this year without us. The timing doesn’t really fit the calendar this time, and honestly, a single location isn’t really the kind of thing I’d take on a few extra hours of travel for. Already last year I had asked myself when winery-hopping, where the path between the stops is also a big part of the point, starts turning into a wine fair with a bit more walking between the booths. No matter, this year the question can stay open for us. We had fun last year regardless, so much fun that we’re tacking on one more little follow-up. Both of the pictures from that earlier article are, as far as I recall, from our walks through the Hölle. Only logical, then, to revisit it in the glass as well, if only because the rooftop terrace at Thörle, after the walk through the Hölle, was genuinely lovely even in the drizzle, and because Thörle itself came up a bit short in that follow-up. It works out nicely, then, that the otherwise rather ambitiously priced bottle crossed my path in an offer that pushed it under the magic 50-euro mark. I’m a Swabian, after all.

Sparkling wine gets short shrift here on the blog. And yet we really can’t be accused of having any part in some sales slump for sparkling wine, because if there’s one style of wine that isn’t neglected in this household, it’s sparkling wine. But maybe that’s exactly the problem. Sparkling wine doesn’t survive the evening, and I simply enjoy writing here about the development a wine goes through. Today we solve this problem with more volume. If a single bottle won’t survive the evening, then it helps to crank up the number of bottles. That’s also the reason there’s only one cork lying in the photo. Because three bottles in one evening, well, that would be crazy.

You know how it is, the craving for Riesling strikes. That aside, it had been a surprisingly long time since we’d had anything from the Mosel in the glass. And since the Mosel means, if not exclusively then certainly for the most part, Riesling, that lets us kill two birds with one stone. Or one bottle, in this case. Today’s comes from Thomas Haag of the Schloss Lieser estate in, where else, Lieser. Anyone whose ears prick up at the name Haag is right to do so, because not far from Lieser, in Brauneberg, brother Oliver makes wine at the Fritz Haag estate, which we’ve had on the blog a few times before. Lieser, and with it Schloss Lieser, is incidentally part of this year’s stretch at Mythos Mosel again. So if you’d like to catch a glimpse of the castle yourself, this would be your chance. We ourselves have honestly given the stop a wide berth in recent years owing to the crowds. This year too, with guest estates Clemens Busch, Carl Loewen and Geltz-Zilliken, it’s likely to be quite lively. But even just walking past the front of the castle is worth it. An impressive building. The estate itself isn’t housed in the castle proper but in a building next door. Thomas Haag and his wife Ute founded the estate in the 90s. By now the next generation, Lara and Niklas, is already on board too.

The apple year starts early. Mid-February perhaps. At our place, at least, and depending on when the scales tip from “it’s still bloody cold” to “now we really ought to get on with it”. Usually that’s a sunny day in February. Right upfront: with everything we do on the meadow, we have the luxury of not depending on it, of not being reliant on it. If the days are too rainy, the spontaneous fermentation too spontaneous, or the apple year a rubbish year, it hurts, but only emotionally and not in the wallet. And so we have the luxury that it can be a sunny day on which we happen to have time. If that day only comes in March, then it only comes in March. But that also means we can never really empathise when the hail comes, or the drought, or both. Still, the connection to apple, pear and co is a different one. Because orchard meadows here at the edge of the Swabian Alb in beautiful Württemberg, the most lovely little spot on this planet, as the saying goes, are a defining feature of the landscape. It is the cultural landscape that shapes every car drive, hike or bike ride here. Stückle, Gütle or whatever you want to call it, it is part of life. And sadly somehow not anymore. The trees aren’t tended, the meadows aren’t mown, and from orchard meadow to bramble thicket is but a stone’s throw. That, really, is the main reason we trudge up and down the south-facing slope, pick up the saw and slather sun cream on our necks already in February. I hate sun cream, sun cream with sweat running into your eyes I hate even more. But the orchard meadow must survive.

For a while, I bought pretty much anything from the Jura that came across my path. And the faster you had to click, the better. With a few exceptions, at least, since the bigger names like the bigger wines from Ganevat, Miroirs, or Overnoy are simply outside, or even far outside, what I’d be willing to spend on such a click. But that still leaves plenty of estates on the list. One of these estates was Domaine des Cavarodes with their half-yellow labels. The domaine was founded in 2007 by Etienne Thiebaud in Cramans, north of Arbois. The basic facts are the same as so often in the Jura. Minimally invasive work, organic farming in the vineyard, hardly any intervention in the cellar, no fining, no filtering, and if sulfur, then as little as possible. Honestly, I’m not even sure whether the domaine still exists. The website is gone, the most recent vintage you can find around is 2023, and the information is otherwise sparse. Then again, in the Jura that’s nothing out of the ordinary.

Wisdoms that winemakers print on tree bark. Today: Better to fully botch it than be shit from the start (roughly translated). Daniel Schweizer, who enriches our lives with these words, has been making minimally invasive wine since 2014 west of Heilbronn in Schwaigern in beautiful Württemberg. The vineyards for it lie around Stetten am Heuchelberg (the “am Heuchelberg” part is important, because there’s more than one Stetten where wine is made). Neither Schwaigern nor Stetten a.H. are likely to make a flag pop up on the inner map of most wine drinkers, but maybe we’ll change that today. Daniel farms three hectares, of which roughly half is worked with a tractor, but the other half is worked exclusively by hand or with a horse. Already the second winery within two weeks that has soil-working implements pulled through the landscape by hooves. Daniel has been doing this since 2016 and that, even if one can hardly believe it, is now a whole decade. Whether the wine comes from a horse-worked vineyard, by the way, you’d recognize by the symbol on the label. I can’t tell anymore because the perspective unfortunately doesn’t allow for it and the bottles, once again, are already in the recycling bin.

What happens when the better half orders podcast packages and “just quickly checks what else they have”, well, you can see it in this exhibit. Funnily painted dolphins make their way in. And what happens when I forget to photograph the back label, you can tell from the fact that the Piripi vintage is missing. Two pros at work in this household. Can’t be helped. Azul y Garanza, blue and madder red, okay carmine or purple-red, but to me it’s all the same, have been making wine on roughly 40 hectares since 1999 in Navarra in northern Spain. What feels like not all that long ago is by now over a quarter of a century. And once again it dawns on me how vast the wine world is, and how little of it I’ve actually covered, because at the keyword Navarra not a single drawer opens in my head. And that despite the fact that we already drink quite far off the beaten track. From the very beginning the vineyards have been farmed organically, back then still rather exotic, by now well into the mainstream. The vineyards and the winery building once belonged to a cooperative, somehow funny how things developed from there. The grapes are spontaneously fermented in concrete tanks, and they work in a minimally invasive way. The Piripi with the tipsy dolphin is single-varietal Tempranillo and, as already mentioned, I no longer know which vintage, because the bottle is gone and I didn’t take a picture. It’s natural, that much I know, and bottled without sulfur or filtration after spending two years in concrete tank. The Suelo Vivo, the grasshopper, is single-varietal Garnacha Tinto, also known as Grenache, which thanks to its color sits somewhere between a very dark rosé and a very pale red.

We had these for easter. But unfortunately, we can’t offer an Easter bunny on any of the bottles currently in our possession. But thematically we’re still well set up with the sheep, and we’ll just accept the horse’s behind on the bottle next to it. We didn’t buy the wine for Easter, of course. It drifted past me in Andreas’s feed, and after a brief glance across the table from the better half, on account of the animal label, it was filed into the “we need to have this” drawer. As gigantic a manure heap as social media has become, for discoveries like this, wading through the slurry is unfortunately worth it.

Yet another winery I’d been wanting to try for quite a while. That’s why this week we’re once again drinking Spätburgunder from Germany. Franconia, to be precise, and specifically the red wine corner of Churfranken not far from Klingenberg am Main, from where we already had Pinots here on the blog. I have to note that was already quite a few years ago. One of the names that definitely has to be put on the table when the subject is Spätburgunder from Germany is Fürst. The Fürst family, in any case, can look back on a winemaking tradition dating to the 17th century. Rudolf Fürst, who lends his name to the present-day estate, had a mixed farm, as used to be more the rule than the exception, in Bürgstadt am Main. In 1979 Paul and Monika Fürst take over the estate and build new buildings directly into the Centgrafenberg, which to this day is the site most readily associated with Fürst. In 2007 their son Sebastian joins after studying in Geisenheim, and the potentially next generation is already waiting in the wings. And Pinot, too, has played an important role at the estate for a long time. Around Bürgstadt it grows primarily on Buntsandstein. A few sites are found opposite the town on the other side of the Main, the ones with the big names, Centgrafenberg and Hundsrück, stretch eastward along the tributary Erf, with the slopes facing directly south.

The height of the shelves at wineries one might reach for is a question you very quickly find yourself confronted with when you get a bit more deeply into wine. The first magical threshold you cross is probably 10 euros. Double digits. For a bottle of wine. The next big threshold was and still is 50 euros for me. Even though by now it feels like almost every run-of-the-mill GG casually smashes through that mark with its ass. At that point you’re already in a range where everyone else looks at you wide-eyed and files you away in the crazy drawer. There will be further thresholds, three digits, four digits, utterly-insane digits, I genuinely don’t know, because the 50 still works very well as a boundary stone. Even if we pass it a bit more often than we used to. Some wineries or styles only just begin there, Champagne for example, Burgundy, Barolo and company. Some wineries start at the front, but stretch across several thresholds, and if the beginning of the path already brings a lot of joy, then the question of how far you want to go along it becomes much more pressing than when the path only starts way back there anyway.

It wouldn’t have felt right to do this lap through Austria without also having a wine from Jakob Schönberger on the table. After all, last November in Karlsruhe he was a bit of the trigger for this series. Jakob Schönberger is taking over the winery from Günther Schönberger, who was known to the audience in Karlsruhe at least primarily for his music. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung. For me, that was more an opportunity to realize that maybe I’m still pretty young by comparison, because to this day EAV doesn’t get more than a confused look out of me. Also just not my kind of music at all. In any case, Günther bowed out in 1996 and has been a full-time winemaker since then. By now Jakob has taken over and farms about 10 hectares around Mörbisch on Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland. As so often in recent weeks, the vineyards here are also close to the border, this time with Hungary. Though “close to the border” is an understatement, because it’s hard to get much closer than Mörbisch. If you really want to dive deep into the Schönberger matter, you can also listen to the evening in Karlsruhe (if you speak German that is). The vines for today’s wine grow in a Mörbisch single vineyard site called Waldacker, which I couldn’t find on any vineyard map. The vineyards are farmed biodynamically, at the Schönberger estate they’ve been organic since 1991. The roots grow here in clay, the view looks out over the lake, which of course strongly influences the local microclimate. Neuburger is an autochthonous grape variety in Austria, which I’m now having in a single-varietal wine for the first time. After spontaneous fermentation, the wine is aged for almost three years in used wooden barrels.

We had this sparkling on an election sunday. If thats appropriate, everyone has to decide on their own I guess. I’m fundamentally of the opinion that sparkling wine basically always and everywhere works. And bubbly from Austria would probably deserve a whole separate series anyway. Noted for the future, but you have to start somewhere. Today we’re starting in the Kamptal. Geographically, the Kamptal lies downstream of the Wachau, directly after the Kremstal wine-growing area, in the Weinland wine region northwest of Vienna. As the name suggests, the river Kamp flows through the Kamptal, just as the Krems flows through the Kremstal, but not the Wach through the Wachau. That would be too easy. On the three and a half thousand hectares of vineyards here, white grapes are planted by a huge margin, and among those, by an equally huge margin, Grüner Veltliner. In Langenlois on the Kamp lies Weingut Bründlmayer. Funny enough, Bründlmayer is the name that pops into my head first when it comes to Austrian sparkling wine, even though before this bottle I had tasted exactly zero Sekts from this winery. To be fair, Bründlmayer and “the ones with the bottles that look like they’ve been amusingly squished, whose name I can’t think of right now”, which would be Harkamp. But enough insight into my susceptibility patterns for marketing. As I said, a deep dive into Austrian bubbly is on the cards at some point.

We have to bring up two topics right at the beginning. Yes, Smaragd wines can be laid down for a long time, yes, 2024 was obviously not laid down particularly long. But we’re drinking the wine over three evenings and, generally speaking, I don’t see any particular problem there. Then the label. Every time I see one of the Knoll bottles, I ask myself whether I find it really great or really terrible. And the mere fact that I’ve still been asking myself that question for years is somehow fascinating. I’m not a marketing guy, quite the opposite: in my working life I do a lot to keep plenty of space between myself and marketing and/or sales projects. As a buffer zone for peace of mind. But that also means my judgment of labels is based solely on my personal opinion, and to make matters worse, a sample size of one is a very small sample. Two, actually, but the person opposite thinks the label is terrible, and always has. But even she has to admit that in an inn, even in half-shadow and with nine tables’ distance between them, you can reliably recognize a Knoll bottle on the shelf board at the other end of the room. When I think of wine from Austria, this is the label that comes to mind. And that is even more fascinating, actually. Quite a lot done right, I’d say.

We move from Burgenland last week one wine-growing region further to the south-east of Austria, because today we’re drinking Styria. More precisely Südsteiermark, near the border with Slovenia, even more precisely, the Sausal. Slate shapes the soils of the hills here, which after all rise up to 600 metres above sea level. Instinctively I’d call that low mountain range, but in all honesty I don’t have the slightest idea what the exact definition of a low mountain range is. Since the 17th century, the Lorenz family has been making wine in this area. Michi Lorenz, the current Lorenz generation, can therefore look back on an impressive tradition. Not necessarily what you’d expect when you look at the bottle with a label somewhere between Rorschach test and tie-dye guy in the photo. That much rather loudly screams career change with half a hectare or something like that. In fact it’s around 16 hectares that Michi Lorenz farms, who took over the helm in 2019. So 2020 is only his second full vintage.

Drinking thematically connected wines is the nicest way to drink. At least I think so. Not so much because of whatever insight you might hope to gain, but because you ease into it so nicely, and when you then find a connection, a line, a unifying element, you’re all the more pleased, and if not, then it doesn’t matter either. At the last round of SchmelzPerlage&Bodensatz, Jakob Schönberger from Burgenland was in Karlsruhe, and I thought that drinking a bit more Austria has been on my list for a while now. After all, we only had a single bottle from there the entire last year. So why not now, since Blaufränkisch is close to the inner Swabian’s heart anyway. Even if the inner Swabian calls it Lemberger, of course. And the arc from Karlsruhe to today’s bottles couldn’t be easier to draw, because Wachter-Wiesler also makes wine in Burgenland, likewise on the Hungarian border, though a good bit south of Lake Neusiedl, on the Eisenberg. Oh yes, and you even get an animal label as a bonus.

Fear is drinking along. Well, that’s not entirely true, but fear is definitely pulling on the cork too. Because once it’s out of the bottle of De Moor, there’s certainty, but until then, somewhere in the subconscious, the experience with those two bottles of Mont de Milieu is waiting. Of course I know it was just bad luck, that there are plenty of articles and posts from people who had more luck with these exact wines, but I still can’t quite get it out of my head. It’s pretty frightening how a single bad experience can nest itself so deeply in the subconscious. At least so far, not a single subsequent bottle of De Moor has managed to displace it, and we haven’t dared go near Mont de Milieu again at all. At the very least, the buying finger doesn’t twitch quite as much anymore, and since the bottles disappear from the shops mega fast anyway, there’s no need to feel guilty about it.

If anyone is wondering whether I can read a calendar. Yes, I can. February, I know. But we still have to wait a bit for grapes, because we’re slotting a pear tree in between. Literally. If the credo is: the tighter the origin, the better, then today there’s only one conclusion. A single tree is then, inevitably, not just the pinnacle of that, no, it’s the topmost stone of the little cairn someone has lovingly piled up on the tip of the summit cross. The very top, tiniest pebble. Closest to the sky. Because it doesn’t get any tighter than that. If origin is everything, then everything has been wrung out here. A single tree. And setting aside all debate about whether orchard fruit benefits from varietal purity, what “site” even means in the context of a fruit tree, the fact that what’s in the bottle grew on a single, very large and very ancient pear tree. All that remains is fascination.

January has basically just ended, and what could be more suitable for a seamless transition from orchard fruit to grapes than a combination of the two in one bottle. Exactly: nothing at all, and that’s exactly why this week we’re drinking two bottles from Schnitz und Butzen. I consider Schnitz und Butzen to be the best name anyone could come up with for a company processing orchard fruit, its hard to translate though, something like slice and core I guess, and every time their drinks cross my path somewhere, I’m delighted. So it’s long overdue that they show up here as well. For his fruit sparklers, Peter Baumgartner uses orchard fruit from meadows within a 30-kilometre radius around Unterbechingen near the Danube. The motivation for doing so aligns with many of the other producers we’ve been drinking over the past weeks: to utilise the fruit, add value, and give orchard meadows a future. Ochsenäcker is made from fruit from the eponymous house site near the cellar. Roughly equal parts apple and pear from different varieties go into the cuvée. First, the base wine is aged on full lees before the fruit sparkling wine is then allowed to mature for another two years on the lees in a second fermentation in bottle. Méthode Traditionelle. It is dosed with 11 grams of residual sugar and disgorged by hand. Quince and Pinot consists, as the name suggests, of 60% quince and 40% Pinot Noir grapes. From the informative label you can then gather that this combination spends 7 months on full lees and then at least another 15 months in bottle before, after removing the lees, 18 grams of sugar per litre are dosed.

We interrupt the cider programme for an important announcement. Before we more or less fell head over heels in love with fermented orchard fruit, January still had room for non-alcoholic drinks. Not necessarily because we didn’t want to drink alcohol in January, but above all because there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening there too, and especially in January this topic pops up at every turn. No matter how you feel about Dry January, you can’t really deny that having more choice of exciting drinks without alcohol is a good thing. Then at the very least the driver doesn’t have to drink either water or juice while everyone else sips at the wine pairing. And just like with cider and co., this topic is also potentially a whole new field when it comes to origin. The two drinks today come from Fruitslagers in the Netherlands. Cul Sec is their non-alcoholic wine alternative, available in four styles in the current vintage, two of which we’re tasting. However, these two in turn aren’t from the current vintage, more on that later.

When you drink wine, even if you’re only just getting started, it doesn’t take long before the concept of terroir gets thrown at you. Cider and Poiré are a long way from that. That’s certainly because vines reflect their immediate site much more distinctly than fruit trees ever could. But that’s not actually what I’m getting at. There would be plenty of points of reference for terroir in fermented orchard fruit. Across the entire country, apples and pears are being processed, and no one will deny that, microclimate or no microclimate, the local climate can be quite different. There would be incredibly many very local varieties. Just around the corner here, a few trees of the Schwarze Birne variety are a very good example, which is now also an Arche passenger, and from whose fruit Helmut Dolde makes sparkling wines. Then there’s the influence of the cellar, the training system, the élevage, the maturation. Is that still terroir? Undoubtedly it has a major influence on what ends up in the bottle and is tied to place and producer. Which term you want to pull out for that is secondary. Especially because apple, pear, and quince in this country are still incredibly far from that discussion. Instead of being able to focus on local varieties, in many places awareness first has to be raised again that there’s more than the handful of apple varieties you see in the supermarket. And to plant the trees for them. A pear tree can only laugh wearily at the time a vine needs for its first grapes. But then it might stand in the same place for several hundred years. If you let it. And the drink itself, handcrafted, fermented orchard fruit in bottles, has so far only happened in tiny quantities. That’s certainly one reason why so many of the producers we drink here on the blog are, in one form or another, planting meadows with as many old, perhaps also local varieties as possible. And who knows, maybe that’s the foundation for the idea that in a few decades, people will be able to talk much more about terroir in cider than they do today.

Pop. Pop. Ah, swing-top bottles. For all the debate about tree bark, agglomerated corks, screw caps, crown caps, glass stoppers and all sorts of plastic in the bottle neck, for all the joy traditionalists take in pulling a cork, all the pain at the smell of wet cardboard and the feeling of security when unscrewing. If there’s a swing-top bottle standing anywhere nearby, then my two thumbs are on the clasp faster than anyone can shout “agraffe”. Pop. And nobody, really nobody can tell me that isn’t awesome. The more pop, the better, really. And at least in my circle I’m not alone, here in the household I’m usually too slow at the bottle. A bit of international consensus that the young year can, unfortunately, already urgently use. A pity that in the wine world this type of closure plays absolutely no role at all. The only one that comes to mind right away is the petnaT 3000 from Weingut Schätzel. But right now we’re not drinking wine, we’re drinking fermented orchard fruit, and at the Ciderwerkstatt Böhm they bottle under pop. Hooray!

With a year drawing to a close, the Christmas gluttony is about half digested, and stomach acid is slowly settling back to a normal level. “Between the years”, as they like to say. And at the same time: before New Year’s Eve. Inevitably, the next “so what are we actually drinking” question was on the way. And the next bout of excess. For most people, something with bubbles will show up on the list for the turn of the year, alongside the food, for the toast, and in general. That we’re increasingly replacing fermented grapes with fermented orchard fruit in our bottles probably won’t come as a big surprise by now. By now it’s become something of a tradition here to drink beyond the wine in January. Often completely without alcohol, but at least just as often with apple, pear, or quince in the bottles. We’re keeping that going this year too, and for a smooth transition we were starting already last year but with translations lacking behind, here we are. And also because I’m of the opinion that cider or poirée are the better toasting drinks anyway later in the evening. In a way, the repair drink on the night itself. And a second bottle up front or in between isn’t a mistake either.

With a bit of delay, we ask the question: What are we actually drinking at Christmas? By now, this question comes up on three evenings plus for the blog. Even if from about mid-November onward I keep thinking that this year we could decide in advance and take a bit of stress off the 24th and 25th, it ends up, as every year, being a rather spontaneous affair. The credo is simple anyway: better pack a little more, definitely bubbles, preferably more than one bottle, and definitely across the flavor spectrum. Then you’re on the safe side. Experience shows that planning and reality rarely align, and in particular those bottles you were sure you’d have practically the whole thing to yourself are the very first to be emptied. And that supposed crowd-pleasers are still half full the next morning.

Quite a lot has happened at Winzerhof Stahl since we had the wines here last time. In the meantime, a star now shines over Christian Stahl’s culinary art, who, as I saw scroll by somewhere in the feed recently, cooks the food to suit the wine and not the other way round. That kind of makes sense as a winemaker. A visit to Auernhofen is still on the internal to-do list anyway. Not least because you can then stop by Landbau Krämer as well. And there’s been movement in winegrowing too. Since 2023 the estate has had a respectable 40 hectares under its wing, a huge increase compared with the one and a half hectares on which Christian Stahl started. And the wine lines Federstahl, Damaszenerstahl and Edelstahl have given way on the labels to grape varieties and vineyards. And the varietal portfolio is growing as well. I place Chenin Blanc on the Loire or in South Africa. Certainly not in Franken. This one grows on limestone soils on the Main and is matured in Tonneaux. The Scheurebe comes from the Marsberg, from 40-year-old vines, is hand-harvested, spontaneously fermented and then likewise matured in Tonneaux.

At the latest, when you try Silvaner with a winemaker at a winery in Rheinhessen or at some event and strike up a conversation, you’ll hear that Rheinhessen is the largest Silvaner-growing region in Germany. And because no other area outside Germany grows Silvaner to any significant extent, you casually also pick up the title of world champion in terms of Silvaner acreage. And that even though the relative vineyard area planted to Silvaner has crashed from over 60% a hundred years ago to well below a tenth. In absolute terms, though, we’re of course still talking about quite a lot of vines. We’ve already talked about this when having Bischel. One of the bottlings you see from time to time is certainly Feuervogel from Klaus Peter Keller. In this case today, the 2020 vintage. I don’t follow the estate’s portfolio in great detail, given how hard it is to get hold of the wines at all and the prices, but I think there are now three Silvaners with the odd special bottling as Reserve or as an Ortswein here and there: the entry level, above that Feuervogel, and by now Am Austernfels on top of that from a parcel with, as expected, lots of oysters in the soil as Auster is oyster in German. Still, Weingut Keller is of course mainly known for its Rieslings, then probably for Pinot, and then, yes, then perhaps the Silvaner. Or rather Sylvaner, that’s how it’s written on the bottle.

It was announced and now we’re going through with it. We’re drinking wines from the Ahr again. Since the Ahr is indisputably red-wine country, the choice falls once more on Spätburgunder. About 80 percent of the slightly more than 500 hectares of the region are planted with red varieties. According to Destatis, with this total area it isn’t in last place, but the gap among the four smallest winegrowing regions, in ascending order by area Hessische Bergstraße, Mittelrhein, Sachsen, and the Ahr, isn’t particularly large. However, it is probably the region with the highest share of red wine in Germany. Close behind that, Württemberg.

Admittedly, it doesn’t feel fair to the Ahr that the last bottles from the region were from the exact same winery and that the article started with the words that there’s a need to catch up on this wine region. That obviously didn’t work out so well. I promise right at the beginning: It won’t stay this way and soon other Ahr wines besides those from Julia Bertram will appear here. But not today. Because today we are drinking Julia Bertram again, who in the meantime is no longer called Bertram, but Baltes, and still grows and vinifies mainly Spätburgunder in the Ahr region at the Bertram-Baltes winery.

My wine purchases have become quite focused on the blog lately. Most cases are a wild hodgepodge of bottles that I either know or hope will be a good fit here. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes I pull things out of the cases that make me wonder for a moment what on earth possessed me to press the buy button. Weißburgunder and Grauburgunder? Why? Although the bottle here says Pinot Blanc and Gris, respectively. Maybe it’s easier to get the wine out to the public that way. And at Weingut Heitlinger, there’s a lot of wine to get out to the public, at least if you go by the cultivated area. Around 80 hectares around Tiefenbach in Kraichgau in northern Baden are cultivated, which is well above the average of 28.5 hectares that a VDP estate has under its wing according to published figures from 2023. If you also add the area of Weingut Burg Ravensburg, which is part of the same company, it’s even around 120. Whether after two or three glasses every tee shot on the in-house golf course still goes in the direction of the intended hole, who knows. In any case, the vineyards are farmed organically, and the varietal mix is dominated by Spätburgunder, Grauburgunder, and Weißburgunder, each accounting for about a quarter of the vines.

This feels a bit like the sequel to the three bottles of Saumagen from a few years ago. For the sake of completeness. But somehow it’s also about satisfying a driving curiosity as to how well the bottles have held up. Because one bottle of ‘15 Saumagen Spätlese, which we brought to one of the lively wine evenings in Karlsruhe, survived the Württemberg-Baden border crossing only moderately well. I claim it’s the border crossing’s fault, but in truth the cork probably just let in more oxygen than it should have. And once that happens, I carry it around in the back of my mind until I can convince myself that it was hopefully just a downward outlier. And for precisely this work of persuasion, this time we are opening two more bottles of Kallstadter Saumagen Spätlese from Köhler-Ruprecht. Vintages 2016 and 2017. The Kallstadter Saumagen, located west of Kallstadt, is probably not as closely associated with any other winery as it is with Köhler-Ruprecht. At least in my mind, the two are almost synonymous, even though other vintners of course press wines from the Saumagen, which, with its roughly 40 hectares depending on the source, provides enough area for it. Köhler-Ruprecht farms just over 12 hectares of vines, but not all of them are in the Saumagen. The winery offers dry Riesling across the Prädikate, and the Spätlese lies pretty much in the middle. At least, if you ignore that some versions also exist with an extra R.

The unicorn hunt sometimes inevitably leads to bycatch. One can then accuse dealers or winemakers of using the madness surrounding the rarer bottles to get rid of slow-sellers or to sell the estate wine. And sure, every now and then there are wines included that make you think afterwards that you could have done without the unicorn, because you now have five bottles of mulled wine potential or cooking wine in the cellar. But then you might only buy from them once. Sometimes, however, the packages are also used to ensure that bottles that otherwise fly under the radar at least catch some of the spotlight. And this is precisely what has led me, at least, in recent years to buy only the bycatch in the following vintage. That saves your nerves and usually benefits your wallet too.

The wines from Kopp are quite similar to the Muster bottle from recently. Not the wines themselves, of course, those are completely different, but they are the kind of bottles that have been popping up for years and somehow never made it into a post. Although every time I thought, I really should. Food pairing here, wine list there, wines by the glass over there. Time and again we have drunk Kopp or Kopp has crossed our path. It went so far that right before writing this, while we were drinking two or three well-deserved shopping-break-wines in Stuttgart-Mitte, someone from the winery itself walked into the shop to drop off sample bottles. Timing basically doesn’t get any better.

That one? Yes, that one still can wait. And that one? That one too. And then you finally open the bottle and it’s done for. The eternal inner struggle to find the right moment to pull the bark from a bottle is particularly tough when you’ve only bought a few bottles, or even just a single bottle, of a wine. You might miss out, or open it too early, or too late, or catch it in a bad phase. Searching the internet for other people who happened to have opened exactly this wine helps a little. But whether their palate matches your own, and whether your bottle is at the same point or not, you only find out upon opening. Fundamentally, I believe that opening too early is much less of a problem than opening too late, especially if you only have a few bottles. And you can always give the wine some air at home. The uncertainty sometimes remains, and this bottle of Spätburgunder Heerkretz GG 2019 from Wagner-Stempel is one such example where I had no idea at all whether I should open it now or wait. In the end, curiosity won. And there’s still a second bottle, with which I’ll hopefully be also lucky with the cork. Fingers crossed.

Jonas Dostert is, for me personally, one of the winemakers who most shape my perception of the Obermosel. When I think of Mosel without Riesling, I always also think of Dostert’s wines. And Mosel without Riesling is always something extraordinary, considering how deeply steep slate slopes and Riesling itself are embedded in the German wine consciousness. On the Obermosel, at the German-Luxembourg border, the vines grow on shell limestone. And it is right there on the border, in Nittel, that Jonas makes his wines. The last time we had them in our glasses, it was quite difficult to get a hold of bottles. That seems to have eased a little, as is the case with many other wines nowadays. At least it’s not because of us. Large quantities are still not produced, and even less so because the past few years have not exactly been easy. Instead of the Karambolage, made from a mix of Elbling and Pinot Gris, now all four varieties in the lineup, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Elbling, and Pinot Gris, collide in the Gros Carambolage from the 2022 and 2023 vintages. The dry summer of 2022 was a real challenge. Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris spent some time on the skins, Elbling and Chardonnay were pressed directly. So overall, it’s kind of a rosé, but also not. And because we only had blends here on the blog in the last round, it’s now time for a varietal bottle. The Chardonnay from a parcel right by Nittel is pressed directly and has a touch of new oak in the aging, which it apparently didn’t in previous years.

There are these wines that you come across again and again, each time thinking you really should take the time for a bottle, and then somehow you keep forgetting to do it. For me, the wines of Maria and Sepp Muster had belonged in that category until now. It’s easy to assume that the wine just didn’t make a deep enough impression, but the reality is simply that I forget things. The wine itself is not to blame. What helps, at least for me, is recognizability. And with the seemingly two-tone labels, that recognizability is more than present. Even from across a large room, you immediately think, “Ah, Muster”. And that’s pretty much the thought when the bottle is right in front of me on the table too.

It is what it is, I am highly susceptible to moderately good puns like Wein Goutte. Which works best in German I guess. Add a trendy label and I’m practically a customer. Emily Campeau and Christoph Müller make wine under this name in Hüttenheim, Franconia. If you’re as lost as I am on the mental map: that’s a few minutes south of Iphofen at the edge of the Steigerwald, somewhere between Nuremberg and Würzburg. As is often the case with wines sporting labels like these, there isn’t a typical winemaker’s career behind the bottles. Christoph and Emily are career changers, both originally come from the hospitality industry and fell in love during the harvest at Weingut Weninger in Austria. With each other, and soon after, with the idea of making wine together. First in Austria for two vintages, and finally in Franconia, where they now farm about four hectares organically together with Linda and Erhard Haßold from the Weinhof am Nussbaum.

The wines from Weingut Petri are a constant presence in our wine-drinking lives. Not that we would load up the trunk, we’re not the kind of customers for that, but they show up here and there year after year. It’s time they get their own feature here as well. They are also, as far as I can remember, the starting point of our Raffelt wine socialization. The episode of WRINT Flaschen back then ended up on our dinner table, albeit with some delay, cheers to asynchronous podcast listening, so it’s actually been a little less than ten years. But for almost ten years now, we’ve basically tasted every package, while Holgi asks questions and Christoph explains. It’s a bit crazy that it’s been so long. Back then, the wine package cost 31.90 euros. That does make you a little nostalgic. At the same time, Petri might be the only winery where I can demonstrably say I’ve influenced others successfully, long before I ever wrote about what I was drinking. And with my better halfs family, the trunk space is regularly well used.

Not much about wine is truly objective. When the winemaker sends it to the laboratory, I assume that the results from more than one lab will be more or less identical, setting aside small variations in the samples. The vineyard location is clearly known, at least to the person who harvested it there. You can look up what the weather was like in the growing year, if a station close enough recorded measurements. When the grapes were picked and what exactly happened in the cellar should also be fairly straightforward to reconstruct, at least for the one working in the cellar. When it was bottled, when it went to the retailer, and when it arrived here. When I opened the bottle, how warm or cold the wine was at pouring, which glass was used, and how long it stood here before opening. All of that can still be tracked. But then, things start to thin out. How well the bark kept the liquid inside is visible, but how well it kept the gases out is already trickier.

Almost every time Riesling comes up, whether here or in offline discussions, I find myself saying, in essence, that when I put a bottle of wine on the table without a specific plan, it’s never a Riesling. But what is it then? For example, something like this. Well, not exactly this one, since we’re having the Zen line for the first time today, but a Chardonnay from the Bret Brothers. I’d already written a bit of background about the winery the last time it came up. It’s located in the Mâconnais, in southern Burgundy, and has been family-owned since 1947, with the current generation in charge since 2000. However, half a hectare of vineyards in the Au Vignerais site have only been owned by the estate since 2016. The vines there stand on a mix of limestone and clay, facing south. The cultivation is certified biodynamic.

I am constantly preaching that you should drink beyond your own backyard. I try to do this myself again and again. Because where red wine from the south with 15 percent alcohol is still somewhat within the bounds of my own wine horizon, rosé with almost as much alcohol content is so far off that you need binoculars. And that’s exactly why these two bottles are on the table this week. Okay, maybe winter would have been the better season, but the planning didn’t go that far.

The German wine world is currently revolving around Wiesbaden and the VDP’s preview of the Grosse Gewächse. So I thought a bit of a counterpoint couldn’t hurt. Thematically, this bottle fits perfectly into last weekend, since there was plenty going on with wine in Saale-Unstrut as well. Konni and Evi opened up their vineyard and hosted a Silvaner festival with many guest winemakers. We would have loved to be there, but unfortunately, it just didn’t fit into our schedule. The plums had to come off the trees, otherwise, that would have been done by our colleague Worm and the birds, and there’s really only time to harvest on the weekend. Judging by what I saw on social media, we sadly missed a truly great party. But at least we joined in spirit with this 2019 Blauer Silvaner, which means blue Silvaner, in our glass. You don’t have to be Sherlock to fill in the blanks in S**l*-*nstr*t. But you would have to get through the quality wine approval process to write it on the bottle without gaps. And, of course, this central German Landwein was not seen once by the examiners.

A glance at the Scheuermann winery’s homepage might make you think not much has changed since we last had the Rosé here. The wine is, unsurprisingly, still wine made from grapes, unbound and as grown. And somehow, that’s a good thing, the consistency in such a young winery. Because every time I come across the Rosé, it is just as good as it was back then, and when I think of a rosé I really like, it’s the Scheuermann’s stoneware bottle that comes to mind.

When it comes to wine from the Kaiserstuhl, the name Reinhold and Cornelia Schneider comes up again and again. Their winery is located in Endingen, right in the Kaiserstuhl. Like so many winegrowers in Baden, the Schneiders have a background in the cooperative. In 1981, after leaving the cooperative, they founded their own winery. A few years later, they joined the VDP Baden. This is a fairly typical origin story for a good winery in this state, one might think, but if you look for the “Traubenadler”, the grape eagle, on their bottle necks, you’ll search in vain, just as they left the cooperative, the Schneider family has also left the VDP. A few years ago, their son Alexander joined the winery, the next generation, who in 2024 took over. Just under seven hectares of vineyards are cultivated: close to nature, with a lot of time and manual labor, and in a size where the reins can still be firmly held. In the cellar, too, there is time: slow pressing, spontaneous fermentation, and long aging on the lees. In many ways, it’s a bit like the old days here, the Grauburgunder is labeled “Ruländer”, the labels are very classic and simple, the top wines bear three stars on the bottle, a letter for the soil type or the vineyard name, and even the website feels a bit like it’s from another era. The Chardonnay, marked with three stars, is spontaneously fermented after pressing, undergoes malolactic fermentation, and is then matured in large, used wooden barrels. The wine from the Engelsberg is also spontaneously fermented, here on the skins, and then aged in large oak.

A bit over two weeks ago, the third Stuttgart Landweintreff opened its doors in the former state parliament of the state capital. We tasted a lot and didn’t write down much. In fact, nothing at all, to be exact. But in exchange, we now own a second cloth bag with a happy local wine glass on it and that’s worth something too. The line-up was relatively similar to the second edition last year, peppered with the usual suspects when it comes to Landwein and other minimally intervened grape juice, as well as one or two new discoveries. Seehaldenhof belongs in the first category and was already present in 2024. Lately, wines from and around Nonnenhorn, not just those from Seehaldenhof, are popping up more and more here and there. Maybe sometimes still under the old estate name, Hornstein am See, which has been replaced by Seehaldenhof since early 2024. Lake Constance is slowly turning into a trendy wine hotspot. It occurs to me that it’s been over three years since Lanz (also at Landweintreff, also still great) was last drunk here. Time flies.

Admittedly, we are not straying particularly far geographically. But it just fits so well, and that’s why we are not only staying another week in Rheinhessen, we are even staying in Westhofen. For our Maxime Open finale at Mundart in Saulheim, we had a bottle of 2016 Chardonnay Reserve from Wittmann. And because that was really good and I’d already had my eye on this Riesling once or twice recently, this bottle now has to face its fate. For the thematic arc, and for myself. It did not get as much time as the Chardonnay on the bottle, but you can’t have everything. And 2019 is six years ago by now, after all.

Sometimes things just fall into place. I had absolutely no idea that Katharina Wechsler would be pouring at the Maxime Open. Technically speaking, she wasn’t there on Sunday either. I think it was two staff members from Australia who were at the booth, enthusiastically guiding us through the range they’d brought. If I remember correctly, though I didn’t take notes, since we’re about to drink these anyway, then the Rosé and Silvaner from Mommenheim were included, too. That’s ultimately why I’m writing things down, otherwise my brain is like a giant sieve, especially with the sheer number of wines over the weekend. But this way, armed with fragmented memories and bottles I had already planned to open, we’re now, quite by chance, arriving at our first recap on Rheinhessen. And that’s a lovely thing.

As pleasant as all the tasting on the road may be, somehow it always comes with a bit of stress. For me personally, because of the crowds everywhere, and for my sense of taste, which gets pretty tired after what is probably a three-digit number of sample sips. There’s nothing better than a single bottle at the home dining table. And if the bottle looks like today’s, then there’s something for the eye as well. I had never even heard of Charlotte and David Beck from the Kaiserstuhl. However, they must have nestled somewhere in my subconscious, probably because I saw the wine somewhere at some trustworthy place. Because without some subconscious recognition, we would probably pick a cheaper bottle to fill up an online shipment. Otherwise, the two usually fly under my radar, even though, just to spite me, this particular wine of course popped up in my Instagram feed a few days ago. Sometimes the universe just wants to mess with me.

There wasn’t much left of our originally planned itinerary when we set off for Rheinhessen. Booking trains early is a bit like turning 30: you get to relentlessly witness the decline. But even without a fixed train connection, we still made it to Saulheim just fine. All in all, aside from canceled trains and delays, being able to connect to a train station is a real plus, since for me, driving a car is even more stressful. And hotel and dinner, as well as tickets for Maxime Open, were also booked well in advance. So far in advance that we still received early-bird discount emails long after the booking. Not necessarily the best idea to send those to addresses that already have tickets. Tickets with no early bird. Things like that make the inner Swabian unhappy.

But now for real. It feels a bit like starting the assignment sheet the night before it’s due, just like back in university. And depending on the number of points at stake, you can chalk that up as either a particularly dumb idea or brilliant procrastination. In any case, we still have a set of bottles open for the Rheinhessen wrap-up from the last Maxime Open, and with the next round just having opened its doors last weekend, things are actually getting a bit tight now. So tonight we’re tasting a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a bottle of Riesling Mettenheimer Löss from Weingut Sander, both from 2023. The winery itself is also located in Mettenheim and is the oldest organic winery in Germany. The Sander family has been practicing organic viticulture here for three generations, with bottled wine sales dating back to the 1920s.

Right at the very beginning of my writing here, Heymann-Löwenstein actually appeared twice on the blog. And then somehow never again. But that’s not because I haven’t been drinking the wines anymore, it’s much more due to my own completely broken sense of time, which always whispers “we just had that” in my ear. Especially the Uhlen R we drank back then has kept coming back to us over the years and is still up for re-review here at some point, because up to now it has gotten better every time we’ve revisited it. I’m firmly convinced that the screw cap, under which all the winery’s wines are bottled, plays a significant role. It’s not sexy, but it’s reliable. But it’s not just the screw cap that connects this bottle back to Uhlen R, the vineyard does as well.

Almost only typography on a lot of white background, I dig that. I like it with Wasenhaus, I like it with Domaine Lassak, and with this bottle too, the look definitely played a role in my purchase decision. An even bigger part was probably the discount of over a third in the clearance sale. You’ll never get the Swabian out of me, and that’s a good thing. The remaining factor is that the bottle just looks like a great Burgundy, and it says Gevrey-Chambertin on it. But in Burgundy, that doesn’t necessarily mean much, there’s arguably nowhere else where it’s so easy to spend a lot of money for not that much wine. And, to be fair, this wine is also at the entry level within the domaine’s remaining price structure. That’s Burgundy for you, and I’m perfectly fine with reaching my limit at this price point.

The original idea for our Rheinhessen recap, to end with these two bottles directly after the wines from Achenbach, was thwarted by the parcel service, gravity, and the earth’s hard surface. If you look closely at the picture, you can still spot stained remains from the Carménère on the right side of the Petit Verdot. Considering a bottle of red wine broke, the other labels actually looked remarkably fresh. I guess cardboard just absorbs well. Luckily, Mom likes sweet Huxelrebe, so another bottle of Carménère could go undercover on its way to Württemberg. Sending single bottle replacements around is a bit of a waste and this way, it was a full box and everyone’s happy. Mom because of the Huxelrebe, and me because I can still finish my recap as planned, albeit with a slight delay. Of course, we didn’t hop across the big pond after the Maxime Open to taste wines there too, the connection to Rheinhessen is another. Conni Achenbach is Chilean, and so the Achenbachs import a few wines from there to expand their own range. We drink wine from Chile very rarely, so these two bottles were more than appropriate additions with our first order. That the labels are so stylish is an extra bonus.

It’s been almost ten years since I first came across Man O’ War in the WRINT Flaschen podcast. Crazy how time flies. It must actually have been a bit less than that, since we reordered the package in a slightly different selection. But even then, the Dreadnought Syrah was so good that wines from the other end of the world have found their way onto our table again and again. Simply typing Manowar and Valhalla into your favorite search engine doesn’t work too well without further context, at least, not if you weren’t planning on blasting ’80s heavy metal at home. But with a bit more context, it works out. James Cook, who anchored in one of the bays of Waiheke Island near Auckland, New Zealand in the 18th century, gave that bay the name Man O’ War, and that’s why the winery is called that today. The great reds are named after ship classes, while the flagship Chardonnay is called Valhalla. And from there, it’s only a short leap to metal anyway.

This wine is definitely no longer a hidden gem, considering how often I’ve already seen the bottle. But that doesn’t matter. It’s still new, as 2022 is only the second vintage of the Drei Dörfer Chardonnay being bottled. At Franz Keller winery in the Kaiserstuhl region, almost exclusively Chardonnay or Pinot Noir are now planted for new vineyards. However, it takes a few years before a vine bears any fruit, and even longer before it produces fruit that shows the character of a specific site. So what to do? In this case, the Chardonnay grapes from three different sites in three different villages go together into this wine. Not really hard to guess from the name, which means three villages in German. Here, the vineyards are the Achkarrer Schlossberg, classified as a Grosse Lage by the VDP, the Jechtinger Eichert, Erste Lage, and the Schelinger Ohrberg, which hasn’t been classified yet. As already indicated, the vines are relatively newly planted and grow on volcanic soils in all locations. As usual at Kaiserstuhl. Matching the three villages, three different labels from a three-part painting are attached to the bottles. So anyone who wants the complete set on display can revive that childhood passion for collecting cards. Perhaps a bit more expensive than back then, even young vines and the village wine status don’t help with that. The wine is fermented in small oak barrels and aged for a year, then rests for another six months in tank on the fine lees before being bottled.

Already back in January, I threatened to drink more fermented orchard fruit. And in general, I keep saying that I want to try more from the newer states of Germany in the east. The bottles today are the perfect opportunity to combine these two resolutions. And there are satisfied grins across the table, too, because to make it complete, there’s even an animal label on the bottle. Crazy. Franziska Zobel is a winemaker, but at the same time, she’s started to tend the surrounding orchard meadows, pruning old trees, replanting where necessary, and bringing old varieties back into the mix. Orchard meadows are important, they are part of our cultural landscape, and here in our region on the Albtrauf in the south of Germany, they’re even the defining cultural landscape, as well as an ecological refuge for many animals and plants. With about two hectares, Franziska tends quite a bit more than we do with our little meadow. But even our small plot is enough for me to completely relate to the motivation behind taking on such a task. And somehow, that makes the connection to fermented orchard fruit really different compared to wine from grapes.

Whether we are particularly chaotic? No idea. I actually think that anyone who starts buying more than three bottles of wine knows the problem. There are boxes you never really unpack, you just move them from here to there and from there to somewhere else. And in doing so, they become a kind of beloved roommate, sometimes standing in the hallway, sometimes in the bedroom, sometimes next to the couch. Basically, wherever you don’t need to walk. And if such a roommate settles in for too long, you might even forget what you originally meant to unpack from the box. But it doesn’t bother you, whether it’s next to the couch, in the bedroom, or in the hallway. The two bottles today came from exactly such a box, one that was always a little bit but never quite in the way, and I had almost forgotten these two bottles existed. All the nicer when you finally take a look inside.

Not only in Burgundy are trendy wines being bottled in small batches by newly established wineries and projects, Germany can do that too. One such project or winery is WongAmat. Under this name, Jan Raumland has been producing his own wines since 2019. At first, it was just for family and friends, but later also for sale. The name is an homage to his Thai heritage and the family name Wongse-Amatyakul. Jan actually doesn’t have a background in wine, but he discovered his love for fermented grape juice early on while working in gastronomy. Through internships, an apprenticeship at Emrich-Schönleber, a stint at Kellers, and stays abroad, he met Katharina Raumland in South Africa. Since he now shares the Raumland surname, it’s not hard to guess how the story continued. It’s also no secret that wine usually comes with bubbles in the Raumland household. But the idea of making his own red wine never let Jan go, so he started making Pinot with a few rows in the Dalsheimer Bürgel. Shortly thereafter, a vineyard in the Kriegsheimer Rosengarten was added. Alongside these two Pinots, there’s also a Cabernet Franc from the Untertürkheimer Herzogenberg in Württemberg, which belongs to the Wöhrwag family, who are related to the Raumland family, and a cuvée of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon made using a solera-like process.

What is considered normal in wine depends greatly on where you live or at least where you begin to explore the wine world. For those starting out in Germany, grape variety names on bottles and single-varietal bottlings are absolutely taken for granted. However, this certainty starts to crumble once you look beyond the borders, for example into neighboring countries. There, the grape variety is usually inferred from the vineyard site and wine color rather than what is printed on the front of the bottle. Single-varietal bottlings can often be the exception rather than the rule depending on the region. Just look at Bordeaux. Every additional wine country and region on the internal map makes things more complicated.

What a label with animals on it is for the better half, the little note “Only one bottle per customer” just below the product image is for me. I’m not particularly proud of it, and I regularly regret it. But I’m a simple person. If I can buy wine in limited quantities, I often buy wine in limited quantities. That’s just how it is. I’m not even sure if self-reflection makes it better or much worse. As I said, that’s just how it is. It also doesn’t help that you can easily recognize these labels in the endless stream of bottles passing by in trendy feeds. The agency or the winemaker did a good job there. Burgundy, in any case, seems to be fertile ground for tiny producers despite the absurd land prices, and they quickly end up in the “Only one bottle per customer” category. Both because of the small production volumes and the number of mentions in hip feeds. And then, perhaps, they’re not available at all anymore, or only at astronomical prices on the secondary market, and thus disappear from my radar as quickly as they appeared. But sometimes, I do snatch one.

Whether I would have placed Longuich geographically on the Mosel without looking it up, I’m not sure. That’s simply because all of my on-the-ground knowledge comes exclusively from Mythos Mosel, and the westernmost section of Mythos starts in Detzem. Longuich is another full bend of the river upstream toward Trier. And while heading downstream toward Koblenz at least triggers some “Terrassenmosel” synapses in my brain and I could place towns on the map, it’s a bit of a blank around Trier, at least until today. Quite apart from that, if I’d seen a bottle of wine with “Maximin” and “Herrenberg” in the name, without seeing the label, I would have placed it on the Ruwer anyway. And there are Herrenbergs in the German vineyard portfolio like sand on the beach. The Longuicher Maximin Herrenberg lies across from the village on the other side of the river, facing southwest. The red slate here doesn’t seem to appeal much to phylloxera, because there are still vines in the vineyard that were planted shortly after the turn of the last century, around 1902. The winery even has a wine from a parcel here that’s a few years older. But with vines over 100 years old, you can safely call them old vines in both cases.

It happens again and again that I lose track of a winery. There are simply too many of them to keep up, and especially when, like us, you want to try as many different ones as possible, that’s automatically just the natural course of things. That probably makes us something like problem customers, because the scenario where we drive to an estate and fill up the trunk, no, that basically never happens. It’s much more often three single bottles here, two single bottles there, and maybe two bottles of the same wine, just in case one is corked. And cork is a good keyword. We’ve had some truly fantastic bottles from Weiser-Künstler, also here on the blog. But we’ve also had some real bad luck with corked bottles. Also here on the blog. Maybe that’s one reason they slipped off our radar. But ever since the owl on the sparkling wine, the estate is back on our internal list. You remember last week: animal labels. That’s just something someone in this household can’t resist. The Riesling for both wines still grows on the steep slate slopes of the Mosel. And it is lovingly and organically cared for by Alexandra Künstler and Konstantin Weiser. In the Gaispfad, the vines grow facing west, on the riverbank opposite Traben-Trarbach. All grapes are spontaneously fermented and spend a long time on the lees before being bottled. The sparkling wine is bottled without dosage.

Wine shopping is more dangerous than usual when someone stares at the screen from behind with a slightly offset gaze. On one hand, it’s like a time-delayed text-to-speech overlay that reads everything to you again, and on the other hand, your ear is jolted out of its peace here and there by a very loud, very close “I want that one.” And then she wants it, and then you just buy it. Otherwise, it hurts too much in the ear. Sometimes it goes so far that the inner ear gently winces when scrolling past, even without an external sound. By the way, this happens almost exclusively with animal labels. So, dear winemakers, animal labels are the thing.

There are places that etch themselves into your memory. Those beautiful spots on Earth where you’re never quite sure if your recollection is playing tricks on you or if it truly was that stunning. To jog the memory, a quick glance at the photo archive often suffices, and yes, the swing in front of the Kabinett stand and the pastrami sandwich are just as marvelous as I remember. The picturesque path through sleepy Maring also holds up against the memory. It was a bit of a walk from the bus stop at Mythos Mosel 2023 to the courtyard with the tasting stations and the Kabinett stand right on the Maare-Mosel cycle path along the Lieser, but every step was worth it.

Week after week, a group of thirsty men is hustled through the local multi-purpose hall by my better half. And for reasons that escape me completely, they think it’s fantastic. I believe that attendance is primarily encouraged by the one or two half-pints or a wine spritzer afterward, because sport, as we all know, is murder. But what do I know? I’m just the one who gets to stare at the big screen in peace every thursday evening. In any case, the weekly sporting is so well received that this bottle today emerged from the Christmas gift of the thirsty ones. Thanks for that at this point. Also for the fact that today I’m essentially a co-drinker without any athletic activity. Perhaps this post is now also something like advertising for the local sports club. You have been warned and transparently informed.

After four weeks of Riesling in a row, one naturally needs rosé. And not just any rosé, one needs rosé from Württemberg. But calm down, at least it’s not Trollinger. Of course, that would also be available from the house of Aldinger. Because if far in the south, in the land of yellow feet (if you don’t understand this reference, do not worry and simply ignore the local rivalry between Baden and Württemberg), one can charge three-digit amounts for Gutedel, why shouldn’t one do the same for rosé made from Trollinger? Exactly. And we skillfully ignore the fact that my better half quietly mutters “Schwobesäckel” (kind of hard to translate dialect insults) while reading. We are promoting understanding between peoples in our household. And we’re drinking Spätburgunder today, because I’m not completely crazy yet. I still have to admit that the Trollinger Rosé with its pink splash of color on the bottle shelf of my trusted pub in Stuttgart-Wangen tempts me a little more each time. I’m still strong though. As with every semi-darkly pressed bottle of wine that arrives here, let me say upfront: I don’t really drink rosé that often. Maybe that’s a bit too much of a self-fulfilling prophecy and there really would be a lot to discover, but I actually think that a lot of rosé simply doesn’t fit my taste profile at all. And that’s okay. All the more delightful when bottles do appear here and there that win me over. This is such a bottle.

We conclude our small round of semi-aged Rieslings where we began, at the Mosel. This week, however, a few Mosel bends further towards Koblenz, namely around Kröv. If you look very closely at the picture above the article, you can spot two small golden spots relatively far to the left on the label. In real life and against the light, it’s much easier to find these spots and thus identify the vineyard where the grapes for the bottle’s contents were grown. As already mentioned, in this case it’s around Kröv. One of the two wines grows north of the river in the Kröver Letterlay with a view towards the south. The other bottle comes from more or less directly opposite, as much as “opposite” works in a river bend, from the Kröver Paradies and from a plot that belongs exclusively to the winery, here with a western orientation. The vines for both wines stand on slate. Both Rieslings are classified as Spätlese and made in a dry style. When Spätlese is on the bottle, the grapes must have a certain must weight, which means sugar content, and chaptalization (adding sugar) is not permitted. This was, of course, much more restrictive in the past than it has become nowadays in the wake of climate change.

The Rheingau is even more neglected in this blog than the Nahe region. It’s fitting that I’ve wanted to open this bottle from the Rheingau for a long time, as we continue with aged Riesling. Or at least semi-aged Riesling. The comment for my last article that “aged” means something completely different will come up here as well. And that’s okay, because technically that’s certainly true. But I’ll fight on my hill and maintain that eight-year-old white wine comes into the glass much less frequently for many wine drinkers than one might assume in the bubble we’re in. And also that many similarly priced Grosses Gewächs switch to the downward slope after a shorter time. This bottle could perhaps be left lying for another 20 years. Maybe even longer. Although honestly, I wouldn’t trust the piece of tree bark that I fished out of the bottle neck to last 20 years. The wine, however, I would, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I hope for those who still have the wine in their cellar that appearances are deceiving when it comes to the cork and that it holds up. From Georg Breuer winery, we had the Berg Rottland from 2018 in our glass a few years ago. But if we’re honest, even though the Nonnenberg is occasionally elevated as the secret star, the division at Breuer is quite clear: There’s the Berg Schlossberg and then there’s everything else. And the Berg Schlossberg is and was one of those wines that, if you drink Riesling, you’ve somehow picked up on as legendary. The secondary market prices were already easily in the three-digit range when I was able to get this bottle at the list price of just under 60 euros, and now the winery prices have caught up. This has two effects for me. First, I’m a bit afraid to pull the cork from the bottle, because if it’s ruined, it’s ruined, and there’s no second bottle and there won’t be one. Second, due to the increased winery prices, the same will happen to current vintages. So it will be a one-time experience again, as so often, and indeed that has its own charm.

“Actually, I hardly drink any Riesling anymore” is the kind of statement I like to pull off. A sentence somewhere between truth, self-protection, and lie. The fact is, simply opening a bottle of Riesling when you want something to drink with food or whatever you’re in the mood for, that almost never happens anymore. And it’s also a fact that for a while we may have overdone it a bit with Germany’s leading grape variety, the local queen of wine grapes. And at some point, enough is enough. That’s the truth part. Self-protection, because drinking no Riesling, if you don’t drink less and previously drank almost only Riesling, automatically means that a door, no, a barn door opens to the rest of the wine world. And if the Riesling door were to remain open as well, where would it end? And the lie, well, after last week and what’s still to come, I’ll probably have to admit to myself that I still find Riesling quite awesome. And drink it.

It’s time again for a small thematically connected series of wines here on the blog. This time, they will be more or less aged Rieslings. The moment I realize that we are now only one year away from including the 2016 vintage in a 10-years-after tasting is always a small shock. 2016. It feels like it was just yesterday. Becoming aware that this isn’t the case, and then opening bottles with exactly this awareness, bottles that you would otherwise think “can wait” and move on, this is regularly urgently necessary. And we’ll combine the necessary with the useful and simply write about a few such bottles. With the 2016 Falkenberg from Fio, I’m relatively relaxed about the maturity. At Mythos Mosel 2022, we tasted the 2014 Fio at the stand, which had then been in the bottle about as long as this Falkenberg is now, and there was absolutely no sign of maturity. The trick is, at least according to the Fio Wines team, time when making the wine, time in the barrel, time on the lees. Fio Wines consists of Daniel and Dirk van der Niepoort and Philipp Kettern. The desire to produce classic, great Mosel Rieslings brought the three together, who have been making wine together on the Mosel since 2012.

It’s a bit like a second New Year’s Eve here on the blog, because where kombucha and apples were taking turns the last weeks, grapes are now allowed to play first fiddle again. The wine year, or rather the wine drinker’s year 2025, is starting. And we’re starting it in Baden. Klaus and Maj Britt Vorgrimmler make wine in the southwest of the republic. More precisely in Munzingen, south of the Tuniberg, a stone’s throw from Freiburg. In fact, Munzingen, with its nearly 3000 inhabitants, has been a district of Freiburg since 1973. Unlike the volcanic soil layers on the Kaiserstuhl, limestone lies beneath the loess layer on the Tuniberg. The wine drinker’s reflex immediately shouts that this is just like in Burgundy and quite rare in Germany. And the wine drinker’s reflex is, of course, correct. The Vorgrimmlers have been growing wine on just over three hectares of these soils for more than 30 years. Organic from the start, Demeter-certified biodynamic since 2007, making them one of the first in the region for ecological viticulture. At the winery, perhaps really because of the soil, Burgundy varieties dominate the wine list. A few years ago, however, there were also a small number of bottles of Cabernet Blanc, which we discussed here as the 2018 vintage. Whether it still exists, I don’t know. At least I couldn’t find a current vintage. It would be a shame if it no longer existed, because I liked it very much and good Cabernet Blanc doesn’t grow on every vine. We also had the Chardonnay on the table back then, but it paired so well with the second bottle today that it’s allowed to appear again as the 2022 vintage. It’s fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks. The big brother with the cat on the label is also a pure Chardonnay, but unlike the base wine, it was aged for two years in small oak barrels.

We’re once again focusing on fermented orchard fruit. Fortunately, there’s a little overachiever in me, and I had already tasted in advance, so notes and photos were just waiting to be processed. A small bout of stomach flu can really ruin your appetite for pretty much everything, yes, even and especially alcohol. And unfortunately also for writing, because if you’re vegetating in bed, you can’t be typing away. Thankfully, the vegetating is subsiding, and at least the desire to write has had returned. The appetite for food and drink took a few more days to come back as translating took a bit more time too. At least food and drink were staying where they belong again, which was a step in the right direction. Just like the step of giving more space here to other fermented fruits. That’s definitely something I want to do more of throughout the year. What’s being made from apples and pears is simply too good not to feature here more often. We’re ending the small series with two sparkling apple wines from 1785 Cider in the Black Forest. It’s only fitting that after Christoph Raffelt (re)introduced me to Kertelreiter in my timeline, 1785 Cider followed as a discovery shared by Kertelreiter. That’s often how it goes. Wendy LeBlanc and Patrick Mann met in Seattle while working in the tech industry. At that time, cider culture was just beginning to blossom there, and they thought it might also take off in Europe. Since every helping hand was needed on Patrick’s family farm in Unterkirnach, and the timing was right, they decided to move back to Germany and start processing orchard fruit. The farm itself dates back to 1785, hence the name. And like much of the rest of Baden-Württemberg, the eastern edge of the Black Forest is home to many old scattered orchards that deserve to be preserved and cultivated once again.

We really get into apples, or pears. And so we continue to drink a bit more fermented orchard fruit. It won’t be alcohol-free this January, then. But it remains light. Alcohol-free is still a good keyword, though. While researching and browsing for the two Muri bottles last week, I was surprised by how much choice there is now. There are complete web shops with only alcohol-free alternatives, and at least the labels of the alternative producers are just as beautiful as the usual natural wine suspects. The danger of the bottle then becoming mousy or fermenting again should be limited, but whether it’s delicious or just hip? Who knows. I’ve at least firmly resolved to dive a bit deeper into this this year. But not today. Today we’re drinking Normandy. Geography isn’t necessarily my strength and I also like to confuse here with there and there with here. But I can remember relatively well where Normandy is. The Allied landing there has been used often enough in film, television, and video games. And because the Allies had to drive from somewhere to France and I can at least mark the UK on a map with pretty good certainty, I can also find Normandy in northwestern France. The Pays d’Auge is an area in Normandy in the departments of Orne and Calvados. And boom, we’re at the apple. I had no idea until just now that Calvados is a department, but that somehow makes sense as a protected designation of origin. To avoid making the incomprehension of Calvados lovers even greater, I’d better not say that for me it’s actually only had to serve as a very good substitute for Applejack in cocktails so far, and I’ll leave Calvados as an inner knowledge gap for sometime in the future.

Muri had been on my list of things I wanted to try for a long time. I can’t remember when I first saw the bottles somewhere, but the combinations of ingredients sounded exciting and somehow extraordinary every time I came across them. At the same time, they were probably the first bottles of alcohol-free alternatives where I thought the price was quite ambitious. Muri springs from the fine dining scene in Copenhagen, Denmark. The very Copenhagen that long housed the spearhead of New Nordic Cuisine with Noma. Not that I’ve ever been there. But the influence of product cuisine, fermenting, locality, and also the frequent focus on more or less wild natural wines has left its mark worldwide. And it’s from exactly this gastro corner and the need for exciting drinks for a food pairing without alcohol that Muri springs, founded by Murray Paterson in 2020. The drinks are all based on fermented components, herbs, and fruits, sourced as locally as possible in cooperation with Danish farmers.

January serves as a recovery period for many from the feasting of the year-end holidays. Whether it’s abstaining from meat or alcohol, restraint seems to be a popular way to start the new year. And even independent of possible good resolutions, alcohol-free alternatives to wine are seen more and more often. For beer, this is old news, but for grape-based drinks, alternative usually means with bubbles and unfortunately, very often it also means that it’s not really tasty. This is mainly because something has to carry such a drink and when the alcohol is removed, it’s often replaced by sugar, and sticky-sweet fruit soda with triple-digit residual sugar is simply not good in my opinion. Nevertheless, we try what comes our way and I’m using this January again to present what we’ve discovered in the process. They do exist, the not-terrible alternatives. Sometimes completely without alcohol, sometimes with less. Because fruit sparkling wines aren’t suitable for a completely dry January, but with just over 6 percent, the two bottles today are at least significantly lighter than typical sparkling wine, and fermented fruit in general is an extremely exciting topic. From recent personal experience, I can also report that such a bottle of cider is excellent for toasting to the new year.

These two wines are really the final few meters of the sprint towards the new year. At least here on the blog, because on Tuesday there will still be a bottle or two with raclette. As every year. And because traditions somehow have something going for them, we’re drinking local again for the turn of the year. Well, it’s not quite as local as last year, but that’s also because it’s rarely as local as last year. But Fellbach isn’t that far from here either, and I find it quite charming to bring the view of the wine world back here from afar at the end of the year. It puts a nice bow on the last wine year before the new one starts again with drinks of lower alcohol content. Of course, the wines from Rainer Schnaitmann are no longer new, neither in the wine world nor here on the blog. The first time it was Riesling, then we had Trollinger and even Grauburgunder in our glasses. And everything was good, really good. Only the wines whose labels say Simonroth have successfully hidden from me so far. Until today at least. Under the name Simonroth, particularly good wines have been bottled at Weingut Schnaitmann from the very beginning. Back then still without the grape eagle, meanwhile the vineyards from which the grapes for the wines come are classified as VDP Erste Lage or Große Lage. The Lemberger, vintage 2018, is fermented completely spontaneously with whole grapes and then rests for a year and a half in a mixture of small and medium-sized wooden barrels with one-tenth new wood. In the Spätburgunder, same vintage, 80% whole grapes are fermented, the rest is destemmed. The wine is then fermented for another year and a half in small wooden barrels with two-fifths new wood.

Fortunately, you can’t see how I’m somehow trying to shine enough light on the bottle while half-hidden under the table with a lamp, so that the label is still somewhat readable despite the candle in the background. The image-making setup here is very amateurish, without a lightbox or other photo magic. The early darkness and the single window behind the bottle are often more challenging than I’d like, and often the ability to raise the shadows in the RAW file saves the image. With an 11-year-old DSLR, yes still with a mirror, there are quickly limits to this. Given that, I’m very happy with the result. Christmas wine with a christmas photo. One day too early, but I’m happy about that too. The Christmas season is always more of a marathon than a leisurely walk.

Christmas is approaching with great strides, it’s cold outside, and it gets dark almost immediately after sunrise. And there are wines that work particularly well now and that you wouldn’t want to open when it’s 40 degrees under the roof. This is such a wine, or at least I hope it will be. Barbaresco hails from Piedmont in northwestern Italy and is made entirely from Nebbiolo. Just like Barolo, except the vineyards are located a bit lower, the microclimate is different, and so are the soils. As a result, Barbaresco is generally said to be somewhat lighter, more playful, lower in tannins, and more accessible than Barolo. How accurate this is, I don’t know, as this is the first bottle of Barbaresco I will have ever drunk. And even after a sample size of one, I won’t be tempted to make any statements that sound universally valid. Much like Barolo, Barbaresco is not exactly cheap, and this single bottle is one of those 40%-off, Freiheit-Vinothek-clears-the-warehouse purchases. Otherwise, it probably wouldn’t be sitting here on the table in front of me. Sottimano acquired their first vineyards in the Cottá site in the 1970s, the vineyards from which the grapes for this bottle also come. Since the 1990s, they have abstained from using artificial fertilizers and chemical-synthetic sprays, and the wines have been spontaneously fermented right from the very beginning. After fermentation and maceration, the wine rests on the lees for a year and then matures for at least another year in small used barrels.

At events like the Maxime Open, there are outstandingly beautiful wineries. But within the wineries, there are also relatively normal places and really beautiful places for the winemakers’ stands. I actually have no idea how it’s decided who should or may stand where. Maybe a coin is tossed, or they shoot at targets with sabered corks. However it’s done, Eppelmann had luck or good aim, because it doesn’t get much nicer than there in the brick cellar of Weingut Gröhl. The Eppelmanns started bottling and marketing their own wine in the 1950s. Meanwhile, cultivation has been converted to organic farming and all generations of the family are involved in the business. Corinna Eppelmann, part of the youngest generation at the winery, stood behind the counter and offered Pinot and Chardonnay in three quality levels each. At least officially according to the menu. Unofficially, there were also bubbles and even more single-vineyard wines. And all of it was good, very good even, so good that I ordered and sparkling wine as well as two variants of Chardonnay are now allowed to end the little summer review. Hopefully they’ll live up to what they promised there. We’re drinking a Blanc de Blancs Brut Nature vintage sparkling wine from 2020. Made from Pinot Blanc, aged in large oak barrels, bottled in 2021, yeast plug removed in 2024 and with two and a half grams of remaining sugar. Also a Chardonnay Terra F 2022, the estate Chardonnay, named after Terra Frusca, the soil type on which it grows. Spontaneously fermented in wood and then matured on the lees for 16 months. The Alte Reben (old vines), same year, are treated exactly the same, but are harvested, as the name suggests, from older vine parcels. A small vine age vertical, at least if you disregard the certainly different microclimate.

You don’t pay attention for a moment and bam, it’s almost Christmas. It probably wasn’t very contemplative when the package of these bottles made very quick acquaintance with a hard surface. The first glass breakage on the way to us in, I don’t know exactly, six years or so. And the first that actually gets delivered. That’s a rate we probably shouldn’t complain about. And considering that a bottle of red wine was distributed in the twelve-bottle box and the remaining bottles were subsequently wrapped in seven hundred layers of packing tape by the parcel service, it didn’t look that bad. The two bottles from the Heerkretz were practically unscathed. And we’ll take this exit ramp directly, because today again we’re drinking wines that we discovered at the Maxime Open in summer. And unlike last time, I only had to orient myself briefly when searching for Wonsheim, because it’s practically right next to Siefersheim and I know quite well where that is. Frank and Constanza Achenbach with family cultivate a little over 20 hectares here in Rheinhessen and a small part of it in the Heerkretz. We’ve known that the site is suitable for great Riesling and Pinot Noir at least since Wagner-Stempel, and I already liked the Heerkretz Riesling from Achenbachs in the summer. Only consistent to try exactly that now. The big surprise, which doesn’t appear here for reasons, is happening at the other end of the quality pyramid. Huxelrebe Spätlese sweet. If I’m correctly informed, a reorder should be on its way to Mom soon. A win-win discovery so to speak.

They say the early bird catches the worm, but it doesn’t have to be particularly early for that at the Maxime Open. And probably even later birds didn’t have to leave the station in Schwabsburg with empty glasses, but it certainly wasn’t as deserted as it was shortly after 11 a.m. To address this right away, I had no idea where Wolfsheim was located and accordingly, I had no idea that wine was made there. And honestly, Wolfsheimer Sankt Kathrin, Götzenborn, and Osterberg are not wine locations that make me tremble internally. A look at the vineyard map is actually very helpful for geographical orientation. Martina Bernhard, who stood behind the counter in Schwabsburg, runs the Weingut Bernhard there in Wolfsheim together with her father Jörg. The first thing we say on our side of the table, even before we have a wine in our glass, is how beautiful the labels with the cloudy splashes of color are. And they still are. The next thing we say is how much we like the wines. Perfect for the review now. The Chardonnay 2022 shouldn’t actually exist at all, as these batches normally disappear into a cuvée. That didn’t quite fit, but the wine developed far too well in its year on the full lees. So this limited edition was created. We’re also drinking a Silvaner village wine from the Wolfsheim sites. The village wines are spontaneously fermented, all vineyards are biodynamically managed. The Silvaner then rests on the lees in large oak barrels for 7 months before being bottled.

The summer review continues with a few wines from Rheinhessen. Or rather, first with one wine from Rheinhessen. At the already well-advanced Maxime Open Day 1, overlooking Nierstein, this Silvaner burned itself so deeply into memory that it now gets to open this small series. Mentally, one certainly associates Rheinhessen more with Riesling than with Silvaner, and Silvaner primarily with Franconia. Yet in Rheinhessen, depending on the source, there are about 400 hectares more Silvaner than in Franconia. To be fair, the total vineyard area is also four to five times larger than in Franconia, so the relative cultivation area is correspondingly smaller. However, this doesn’t detract from the fact that a lot is happening with Silvaner in Rheinhessen. The vineyard from which the grapes for the Silvaner Bergen come was bought by Weingut Bischel during the dissolution of Michael Teschke’s operation, who was particularly known for his Silvaner. I’ve never had a Silvaner from him in my glass, but I have had a wine that came from another dissolution, namely the last vintage of Von Racknitz, which was then sold as Landwein P. Sometimes one thing is connected to another, and where something ends, something new occasionally starts. The vines in the Silvaner vineyard were planted in the 60s, the grapes are aged in stainless steel and wood after some maceration time. The wine doesn’t appear on the winery’s homepage at all, in the current vintage I only find a Reserve without the name Bergen at a dealer. So I’m not quite sure if this wine will still or again be available, and I’ll keep an eye on the development.

When it’s dark again at five in front of the window and the tear-off calendar gets thinner, there aren’t many days left in the year. Time to process a bit of what we’ve encountered throughout the year and mentally noted on the quick follow-up list. These will mainly be wines from Rheinhessen, but I want to start with a bit of home. In the middle of summer, the second edition of the Stuttgarter Landweintreff invited us to the old state parliament of the state capital. Perhaps the only wine fair in the world that I would recommend solely for the merchandise. Because a Swabian Vierteleschlotzer who values himself needs a shopping bag with a happily green stemmed glass. Makes life more livable, believe me. The selection of wineries on site is, of course, at least on par. Now that I think about it, it’s somehow funny that I’m using the only VDP estate (I believe at least it was the only one) from the lineup between underdogs and hype producers to mention this fair. The more experienced online storyteller would probably have approached this differently. However, anyone who gets to see the bottles in the picture from behind will be able to confirm that Landwein and VDP don’t have to contradict each other. A fact that should have reached everyone at the latest with the inclusion of Odinstal in the Palatinate association. The Trollinger here is, also according to the back label, a special bottling for the Weinhalle, but I promise it tasted exactly the same at the fair. At least in my memory. The vines for the wine stand in the Remstal, the grapes are openly fermented on the mash and then aged in used wood for ten months before being bottled with just over 10% alcohol. The Schilfsandstein is a repeat offender here on the blog. The vines grow on reed sandstone, as the name suggests. The Riesling is fermented and aged in stainless steel.

It’s been over three years since a wine from Clau de Nell appeared here. Outside the blog, it’s different, the reds have repeatedly shown up here in normal-sized and double bottles. Only the white wines have somehow never made it here. Five different wines are produced at the winery, three reds and two whites. The Chenin Blanc has been around since the 2015 vintage, while the Blanc de Noir only made it to market in 2021. So today we’re drinking the premiere vintage. We don’t drink a lot of Blanc de Noir. Except for sparkling wine, of course, but that’s somehow different. With still wines, I often feel that Blanc de Noir is made just to have a Blanc de Noir or because customers currently prefer white wine to red wine. This isn’t necessarily reprehensible, but it often lacks seriousness, even more so than with rosé. For those who don’t know, Blanc de Noir is white wine made from red grapes. This works because the wine color is almost entirely in the skin, and if you press quickly enough, the liquid, or mainly the alcohol, doesn’t have time to extract these pigments (along with tannins and flavor) from the skins, and the wine remains more or less light. The Blanc de Noir from Clau de Nell is very light, so either it was pressed very quickly and gently and/or almost all the color in Cabernet Franc is in the skins. In any case, the fact that a single-varietal Cabernet Franc is being white-vinified by a winery I greatly appreciate is reason enough to give it a try. It’s the first Blanc de Noir from Cabernet Franc that I’ve ever consciously encountered and thus the first I’m tasting. The biodynamically grown grapes are hand-picked and (obviously) gently pressed. Then it’s spontaneously fermented and aged in used oak barrels.

I can probably count the remaining Bocksbeutel bottles in my wine collection on one hand by now. This is partly because I don’t buy enough Silvaner, but also because it feels like fewer and fewer wines are being bottled in Bocksbeutel. I don’t have statistics at hand to support this, nor do I have the inclination to research it right now. I don’t particularly like the Bocksbeutel for purely practical reasons anyway. It always seems to take up a bit more space than it should. In the refrigerator door, in the refrigerator compartment, on the shelf. And perhaps it’s precisely this nonconformity, the somewhat rugged nature of the bottle itself, that makes me grin every time a Bocksbeutel stands on the table. And it does have its advantages. It doesn’t roll away when lying down, and it’s much easier to grip when pouring than a boring normal bottle. At Weingut Horst Sauer, wines are filled in both bottle shapes. In and around Escherndorf, not far from the Main loop near Volkach, the Sauer family cultivates about 20 hectares of land. And they’re not the only Sauers in the area, so keep your eyes open when buying wine, or you might end up with a different winery in your shopping cart. But anyone who buys wine on the Mosel is hardly fazed by identical surnames when purchasing wine. Directly above the village lies the Escherndorfer Lump vineyard, from which both Grosse Gewächse and Erste Lagen are produced. The vines here stand on shell limestone and enjoy their view of the Main, sometimes more, sometimes less directly facing south, depending on how the river flows before it makes its 180-degree turn at Volkach. By the way, I’ve been told that the camper van parking spot for the wine-loving retiree, directly opposite, on the other side of the ferry, is supposed to be fantastic. I don’t camp, so this is just hearsay. Nordheim is really beautiful though, even for non-campers. The Silvaner S from 2020 is marketed as Erste Lage and comes from vines about 35 years old. It’s fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks, with a short maceration period. Those who want to buy the current vintage will have to do without the S in the name, as the wine is now simply called Silvaner Escherndorfer Lump.

If you ask me who the most famous German winemaker is, I’ll almost certainly say Klaus Peter Keller. Then, for a moment, I think maybe I should have said Egon Müller instead, but by then, it’s already out. And anyway, Egon Müller’s wines are priced in regions I’m unwilling to venture into. This is true of Keller’s high end wines like G-Max as well, especially on the secondary market, but many of his other Große Gewächse have, in recent years, remained somewhat affordable, provided you can buy them directly from the winery. And there are also his estate and village-level wines below that. I spent just under 20 euros on this bottle, so pretty much what you’d pay for a second wine from one of the grand vineyards in a lot of wineries. Unfortunately it is not quite in that price region anymore though. The Von der Fels is often called the “little brother” of G-Max, which is probably nonsense. I can’t judge for myself, as G-Max, the wine Keller is famous for and which is only available in the legendary “Keller Case” for loyal customers, has never graced my table, and most likely never will. This “little brother” label sounds a bit like saying, “It’s made in the same factory on the same line, so it must be just as good”. Which is clearly absurd because it ignores the most important thing, the ingredients.

It was that time again: the Riesling craving struck. After all the Chardonnay and Pinot of recent weeks, it was bound to happen eventually. Riesling it is, then. I’ve been following Andreas’ wines for a few years now, and he himself tends to pop up in places where we also find ourselves. I realize that our evening at SchmelzPerlageBodensatz was over a year ago already. Time really flies, but it was a good time. It’s actually been much longer since his wines appeared on this blog, so it’s high time to change that. Andreas Durst came into the wine world through photography. Anyone familiar with German wine has probably seen his pictures more than once. At some point, he fermented a few grapes in a large glass bottle in his workshop. Since it worked out so well, he stuck with it. The quantities grew, though they never became large, and his techniques stayed minimalist. Now, he produces a few hundred bottles here, and a few more there: Riesling, Silvaner, Spätburgunder, Chardonnay, and Portugieser, the latter possibly the best Portugieser in the world, but I digress, as today we’re drinking Riesling.

One more bottle before we head back to explore wines from other regions. And since this is sort of a bonus, it doesn’t matter that geographically, we’re only moving a few steps away. In fact, it’s just a bit further down the road from last week’s vineyard, across the street. Not directly opposite, or it would be Premier Cru and Clos de la Maréchale, but practically right next door. However, that’s not important today. For me, this bottle is a one I waited for, one I had almost written off in my mind. We didn’t come across Camille Thiriet’s wines in France, but on the Mosel. At Mythos Mosel 2022, at the Lehnert-Veit winery, with what felt like 40°C heat, there was a long table with an incredible number of Pinot Noirs neatly lined up. A special Pinot Noir tasting. Among that illustrious lineup were the wines from Camille Thiriet, along with their cellar master Matt Chittick. If I remember correctly, Thiriet and Lehnert-Veit met in New Zealand at some point, which is how Burgundy ended up as a guest on the Mosel. It was a bit chaotic and very warm at that Pinot table. And yet, the wines stuck in my head. At least, until I saw the price tag. After that, they remained in my mind, but filed under “Nice to have tried”. Then a few weeks ago, they popped up in a newsletter sale, and I finally found a way to justify the purchase to my frugal Swabian soul.

After eight weeks of drinking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, first from Baden and then actually from Burgundy, it’s about time to wrap up this round and bring in some variety. However, I still have one last arrow in my quiver, but more on that next week. Today, I’m just happy that we’re finally tasting wines from a broader area than just a stone’s throw apart. The Côte de Nuits Villages appellation gathers vineyards from several small villages over about 160 hectares, which are quite spread out across the Côte de Nuits, and it ranks kind of low in the hierarchy of appellation classifications. The parcel Vignottes lies between the villages of Comblanchien and Premeaux, towards the southern part of the region. Just cross the road, and you could label the wine as Clos de la Maréchale Premier Cru and likely charge more for it. Such is Burgundy. In Comblanchien, you’ll also find the winery of Antoine Lienhardt, who is a fourth-generation winemaker. One of his predecessors, Maurice Guyot, was one of the first in the region to bottle and market their own wine, a pioneering move before he retired in 1992. It’s amusing, especially living here in the cooperative-heavy Württemberg, to think that despite such big names on the label today, the idea of bottling their own wine only started a generation ago. Antoine took over the winery in 2011, and his sister Héloïse joined him in 2017. The estate is now Ecocert certified and farms its vineyards organically. The grapes are hand-harvested and fermented with stems and all.

It was kind of inevitable that while attempting a cross-Burgundy tasting, I’d end up with three bottles from vineyards just a short walk away from each other. At least I managed that part well. Just as last week’s wine was a bit west of Auxey-Duresses, today we stroll northeast to Volnay. To be fair, I had no idea that Meursault, Auxey-Duresses, Saint-Romain, and Volnay were practically neighbors. So, from my perspective, the educational goal of this little round of Burgundy wines has been more than met. And for anyone who’s been reading along and didn’t know this either, you’re now wiser, and that’s valuable too. The overarching region for the last three weeks of wines is the Côte de Beaune, which forms the southern part of the Côte-d’Or, itself situated at the northern end of Burgundy (excluding the Chablis enclave). For completeness, moving south from here, we have the Côte Chalonnaise, the Mâconnais, and finally Beaujolais before arriving in Lyon. Now we’re all up to speed, and I can finally find the circumflex accent on the keyboard without looking.

Not even three kilometers as the crow flies separate the vineyards from last week’s wine and today’s. So, we’re still journeying through Burgundy, and still in the same area. Just continue on the road from Meursault, through Auxey-Duresses, and then toward Saint-Romain, where the climat Combe Bazin lies up the hill on the right. Unlike last week, where the vines faced east, here they face south or southwest, which makes quite a difference in terms of sunlight. Otherwise, Saint-Romain is a bit smaller than Auxey-Duresses in terms of area, with the exact figures varying depending on the source and year, but the current vintage should be just under 150 hectares. There’s a slightly higher proportion of white grapes compared to red, and there are no Grand Cru or Premier Cru vineyards. However, the climat can be listed on the label, and it is on today’s bottle. The rules for what can go on a label are complex and somewhere between politics and tradition, both terms I use at work to describe a very particular kind of situation. One day, I’ll dive deeper into the subject, but for now, it’s enough that “La Combe Bazin 2021” is on the label.

The last four bottles of Burgundy in the glass have been a bit too enjoyable for me to want to stop now. However, there will be some variety. For one, the next bottles of Burgundy will actually come from Burgundy itself, and for another, they won’t be exclusively red. That means Chardonnay this time—at least for now. Aligoté will surely find its way back into the glass at some point as well. I often feel like Burgundy labels give me a sense of déjà vu. You’ve seen, heard, or read them before, but you can’t quite grasp them, and it feels like the harder you think, the bigger the mental gap becomes. Burgundy is filled with so many place names and vineyard sites, it’s overwhelming. At least, unlike here, they often sound somewhat refined. Maybe that’s because my French isn’t strong enough to recognize the Burgundy equivalent of something like Kreuznacher Krötenpfuhl (Toad Pond of Kreuznach). It could also be that the truly big names cast a shadow over the smaller sites. Still, I’d like a clearer picture in my head when I come across such labels. Time to learn something new.

The final stretch is upon us in this small round of four bottles of Spätburgunder from Baden. As mentioned last week, this bottle also ties back to a previous wine. This time, however, it’s not the winemaker but the vineyard that creates the connection. This Kanzel from the Ehrenstetter Ölberg is something like the last of its kind, at least from Henrik Möbitz. Since the 2018 vintage, the wine still exists and can only be bought in Germany from Möbitz, but it’s now made by Wasenhaus, who took over the parcels starting with that vintage. It’s less than a hectare, for all thee sites together, the Kapelle, Köpfle, and Kanzel plots in the old Ölberg above Ehrenstetten. You often hear the term “garage winery” used to describe what Henrik Möbitz has been doing here alongside his career as a Ph.D. chemist. Tiny, run as a side job, and yet almost every time his name comes up, it’s accompanied by a sense of great reverence for the wines. And sometimes, a bit of frustration too. Too young, needs more air, best forgotten for at least five more years, maybe even ten. Or someone opened it too late, missed the window, it was tired or difficult. And in between, always praise. This doesn’t necessarily help when it comes to deciding the ideal moment to pull the cork yourself. The only reason I’m able to pull this cork is once again due to my erratic shopping habits. The family of my better half comes from this very region, right below the Ölberg, and I happened to stumble across the fact that some pretty good Pinot is produced here a few weeks before the last vintage was sold. So, I impulsively signed up for the newsletter. Why not give it a try? And since I tend to respond to emails quickly, I managed to get in early enough in the allocation to now have this bottle in front of me. In front of us, I should say. To top it all off, there’s now also a personal connection to this wine. Which makes deciding even harder—wait or drink. At least, until the waiter’s knife disappears into the cork, because once it’s open, it’s open, as they say.

Let’s just act like it was planned from the beginning that the last two bottles of Pinot from Baden would create a thematic connection to the first two bottles. It definitely wasn’t a coincidence that I only noticed now. No way. As I mentioned, I originally just wanted to open a few wines from 2018, and that’s how we ended up with this bottle of Enselberg from that year. The fact that Friedrich Keller, who now oversees the wines at Weingut Franz Keller, is also significantly involved in the wines from Klotz, is a nice bonus. The grapes for this wine grow on volcanic soils in the Jechtinger Enselberg at the Kaiserstuhl. The label still prominently features “GG” in the middle, but those who want to buy the current vintage will now find “1G” instead. What was for years the entry point into the world of “Großes Gewächs” (GG) at Weingut Franz Keller is now marketed as “Erste Lage” to make the top tier stand out more clearly. This is fitting for a week when the German wine world gathered in Wiesbaden to taste the new GGs. In recent years, there’s been a lot of talk about too many wines not fully living up to their classification and too many GGs at some wineries. The fact is, I don’t make wine, nor does my bank balance depend on how well I can explain to others why Weingut X has 14 GGs on the list, Weingut Y only 2, and why there might still be a wine above that without any GG on the label, but from that one really great parcel, and what all of this has to do with a pyramid. That’s why I think my opinion on the subject is pretty irrelevant. In short, I believe that pyramids get narrower at the top, and the same should be true for quality pyramids. If, in reverse, and especially with German Pinot, that means I can’t or don’t want to afford the top tier anymore, then so be it. There are a thousand other things I can’t or won’t afford as well. And personally, I really don’t care whether GG, 1G, or Landwein is printed on the label. In this bottle, by the way, just under a third of the grapes were fermented as whole clusters, and the wine was aged in barriques with 40% new barrels.

As announced last week, we’re staying in Baden and moving about thirty minutes north by car towards Freiburg. I don’t have statistics on which winery has appeared most frequently on this blog, but if such a statistic existed, Wasenhaus would likely be a top contender with now its fifth wine. The fact that I can’t verify this with hard numbers actually bothers me a bit. This will definitely be a project for the future, to get the tags in order and then see what we actually drink each week. To be honest, I didn’t expect to keep up with the weekly posts for this long at the beginning, which is why I kept the tags rather minimal. It’s biting me now, but it’s not an unsolvable problem. Surely, though, it’s a problem for winter evenings and not for 32 degrees in the attic. Quite the opposite of the wine today. Over the past few years, we’ve drunk our way through the entire Wasenhaus entry range and have already knocked on the door of the higher-tier wines with a bottle of Filzen Chardonnay. What’s still missing is a Pinot from this level, and that’s now on the table. Wasenhaus is still Christoph Wolber and Alexander Götze, who primarily grow Burgundy varieties around Staufen in Breisgau. The grapes for this wine come from a bit further north of Staufen, from the Kaiserstuhl, and are grown on volcanic soils there, as the name suggests. In the 2018 vintage, about one-fifth of the grapes were whole clusters during maceration. The wine is aged in small oak barrels for 1.5 years after fermentation. The fact that we have this particular wine now is somehow part of an internal coping strategy to stop thinking of 2018 as “that was just recently” and to actually start drinking it. This won’t be the only bottle from 2018 in this series.

The greatest insights often come to me when a bunch of wines share a common theme. The world of wine is vast, and the idea of having a comprehensive overview, beyond the occasional snapshot here and there, is something I’ve long given up on. Even Europe alone is so complex and diverse that you quickly reach your limits. Apart from trade fairs and other events, there’s no spit bucket on our table, so the next day’s fitness and the capacity of one’s liver set strict limits. Though I might eventually get myself one of those fish vases. Even though that’s probably intended as a flower vase anyway, not for the leftovers of tasting sips. What I mean to say is that it’s time again for several weeks of drinking with a single theme. In the coming weeks, our feet might turn yellow (and you will not understand this reference when not from Baden-Württemberg), but our glasses will be filled with red, as we dive into Baden and Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder). We start in the very south of the country, almost at the border. This is only fitting because two bottles from Weingut am Klotz were already in the glass during our last thematic stroll through Baden, and now we’re just reaching a little higher up on the shelf. The winery is still a joint project of the Keller and Reinecker families, who cultivate Burgundy varieties and Gutedel around the namesake Klotz. The vines for this bottle are located in the “In der Ritti” parcel above Istein on loess soil, hence the name Ritti. This particular bottle was probably pulled out of the wax with some flair, as there’s more air bubble than wax layer waiting for the corkscrew. As someone who dislikes wax capsules, this is perfect for me.

So here it is, the last wine from my trade fair order from last November. The package lasted longer than I had expected. Adriano Grasso had only four wines on his table, and this one was the smallest of the bunch. The reason this particular bottle made it into my cart is because there’s a big gap in my wine collection. Uncomplicated food companions from Italy are rare in my purchases, and I take issue with that, especially when I’m in the mood for such a bottle. And that, unfortunately, happens more often than I’d like. So, it’s high time to address this problem. Piedmont in northwest Italy is probably most associated with Nebbiolo, and therefore primarily with Barolo and Barbaresco. However, Barbera actually occupies the largest share of the vineyard area, and as the name suggests, Barbera d’Asti has enjoyed DOCG status since 2008 when grown around Asti (and, to be thorough, in the province of Alessandria). A few kilometers south of Asti, in Calosso, lies the winery of Adriano Grasso, who manages about 6 hectares of vineyards here. Like almost all winemakers featured on this blog, he farms his vineyards organically and he has been certified since 2020. The grapes are pressed at the winery in an old basket press before the juice is fermented with natural yeasts in stainless steel and then aged in used wood.