Author Archives: the winegetter

Jul 15 2012
16 Comments
I have no clue how to categorize this

How I pack wine for plane travel

Recently I reported on US customs duties and that we carried 23 bottles with us on the plane.

In the comments section, bravawine asked how we got that packed.

Here is how we do it: We make sure to travel lightly on clothing when we travel to wine country. My wife’s favorite thing in the world are tank tops, and they are awesomely light and can be brought to good use when packing wine. We now know that we can get about 12 bottles into one suitcase and still hit the 50 lbs. mark for luggage on economy tickets.

The key for me is that the bottles stay in a wine box, and that they have no way to move in the box. To that end, we wrap up each bottle in a tank top or t-shirt or any other piece of clothing that fits. German wine cases are usually 6 bottle cases, but you can also get 12 bottle cases at the wineries. Each bottle wrapped up, we put them in the box, make sure they do not move, and then tape the box shut tightly. Then, it is pretty much impossible that the bottles can move and thereby hit each other in the box. The box goes into the suitcase and is secured the straps inside the suitcase, or you put bigger items around it to secure it.

I have also done that with less bottles (2 or 3) which I pack into cardboard wine gift boxes, the same principle applies: wrap the wine in a thin layer of clothing, make sure the wine cannot move, tape the box shut and put it in the suitcase.

A friend of mine has been bringing us wine lately when he travels to Germany. His baggage allowance gives him two free pieces of luggage. A case of 12 bottles weighs between 45 and 50 lbs, so it is the perfect size. He, again, wraps the bottles in clothing and then puts them in a shipping box which he checks as a piece of luggage. We have not had a bottle broken yet.

It is really easy to travel with 8-9 bottles, because that way you can still store clothing in the suitcase. I am convinced that the key is that the bottles cannot move. That is why I do not just wrap them up in clothing and store them in the suitcase. Any clothing that could not be used for wrapping goes in the small carry on suitcase.

Hope that helps!

How do you go about that when you travel? Curious to see whether there are simpler methods…

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Jul 13 2012
5 Comments
Germany, Mosel, Wineries

Meeting the vintners: Weingut Weiser-Künstler, Traben-Trarbach (Mosel), Germany

Impressions (stolen from Hannah)

Having lived at the Mosel for a number of years, we now have kind of a routine for tastings. We like to take friends with us, and we like to do several tastings in one day, usually a Saturday. This time around, we took our friends Ganna and Thorsten as well as Hannah, from whom I stole some of the photos for this blog post.

For 16 June, we had arranged our first tasting at Weiser-Künstler, a young winery in Traben-Trarbach at the middle Mosel. Traben-Trarbach is not just a village but a city, and also known for its art nouveau (Jugendstil) architecture. In a nice tribute to that, the winery’s labels are modelled in art nouveau style as well. We first came across them in summer of 2011, when my winefriend Yutaka recommended one of their wines on Facebook right when I was planning yet another wine trip. On our visit then, we were deeply impressed by their wines. They showed a very high level of skill and sophistication. In even more surprising news, they had the very first dry riesling that I actually enjoyed (almost loved!): the 2010 Trabener Gaispfad Riesling Kabinett trocken. I was so stunned that we stocked up on those. In more familiar areas, I loved loved loved their 2008 Enkircher Ellergrub Spätlese.

Cork art at Weiser-Künstler

So, naturally, we wanted to visit them again this year. I emailed with Alexandra, the wife who is mostly in charge of the business side of things, and we were going back and forth a bit about the date. Then, I did not hear anything for a while. When I finally decided to call them before we left for Germany, Konstantin, the husband and winemaker, told me that he had just answered my email and that we were on for Saturday, 16 June at 11.30am!

The Weiser-Künstler estate is pretty small, comprising just 2.8 hectares (about 7 acres) in the steep, epic Enkircher Ellergrub and Steffensberg as well as the Trabener Gaispfad vineyards (please check out the links: they are photos of the hills). The vineyards they leased in long term leases were likely to be given up when Konstantin and Alexandra took them over in 2005. They have garnered early praise from high places, among them (my beloved fellow riesling maniac) Jancis Robinson.

The hills offer mostly ungrafted vines, some of them up to 100 years old, which lead to lower but more concentrated yields. While the Ellergrub is mostly blue slate, the Gaispfad offers red slate for the vines to grow on. These different slates lead to very different wines: I found a consistent streak of peach notes in virtually every Ellergrub wine we tried, while I did not notice that in the Gaispfad. The Steffensberg is in a side valley of the Mosel with more earthy soil of clay and yellow slate. Konstantin and Alexandra believe in naturally grown wines and use natural yeasts for fermentation. Their philosophy is to respect the grapes and create light, low-alcohol rieslings, mostly sweet. There is an interesting piece about them from 2010 on the Moselwineblog here.

We embarked on our tour on a typical German summer day: cold and rainy. When we arrived at the deep blue colored estate, we found the door locked. I rang the bell, and a puzzled Konstantin answered through the buzzer: “Yeeeees?” When I told him my name and that we had an appointment, he said: “Please wait, I will come to the door.” When he opened, it became clear that he had totally forgotten about our tasting…but he had time, and so he took us in for a good 90 minutes of tasting. Konstantin is a modest and restrained person, with great wit and quite personable when you get to know him. One of our fellow tasters commented on his poet-like appearance and demeanor. And in a way that is true. His winemaking skills are so finessed and at the same time light-aired that they have something poetic about them.

Tasting impressions

He led us through an awesome tasting. 2011 has been a good year for them, just like across the Mosel. The yields were not only above the abysmally low 2010 yields, but also on par with the 2009: they harvested 45 hectoliters in 2011. 2012 so far has been a normal year for them, with the blossoming beginning in early June.

We tried a total of 10 wines that day, ranging from the simple Gutsriesling to a Beerenauslese (BA). Again, I will be writing about some of the wines in seperate posts. Also, if you are unsure about the German wine classification, check out my at a glance sheet.

We began with two of their dry rieslings. The 2011 Gaispfad Kabinett was again a star. The 2011 ELLERGRUB Spätlese showed an awesome peachy fruit nose with good acidity on the tongue. Another dry was not ready yet. It is still waiting for its release in September 2012: the GAISPFAD Große Eule (Big Owl).

The row

We moved on to the off-dry wines. Their 2011 Riesling “Weiser-Künstler” was pure summer freshness. Great fruit, the acidity well connected to the sweetness. I could see myself drinking this one every evening over the summer. The STEFFENSBERG Spätlese had a fantastic nose of peach and apricot. I found some slight bitter notes on the palate that I was not overly fond of.

In the category of residually sweet wines, we tried the Enkircher Ellergrub Kabinett and then Spätlese, and it was great to taste them right beside each other to bring out the differences in these two styles. More on that in this seperate post.

We then moved on to their Auslesen. The grapes in the 2011 Enkircher Steffensberg Auslese had 100% noble rot (botrytis). It was very well balanced and highly concentrated with a honey-fruity sweetness to it. We then tried the 2010 Enkircher Steffensberg Auslese against it, and were completely taken aback by it. My note reads “Wahnsinnsding” (Wicked/Awesome thing). It has this 2010 acidity punch that 2011 does not offer, there was vanilla and strawberry. It was great, and since it was our wedding year, we stocked up on those, too.

The 2011 Enkircher Ellergrub Auslese has a wonderfully light elegance to it. It is mineralic, and mild, with peaches all over the place and low in acidity.

Stars all around…

As a treat, Konstantin let us try his 2011 Enkircher Ellergrub Beerenauslese (BA), of which he only produced 50 litres, if my notes are correct. That makes somewhere around 150 half bottles. Words failed me on this one. I started taking notes. The nose was very herbal, the color amber. And then I just stopped and enjoyed the beauty of this wine. A wine of this level should not be drunk that young. It should be opened in 10 years, or 15, or 50. This will be good for decades. In this stadium, the sweetness is almost overbearing, and it is hard to not be overwhelmed. But this will be incredible in many years to come. Don’t get me wrong: it is incredible, but it will be even more.

On that note, I want to end this tasting report. We had a blast. What a start to a day of wine tasting. Konstantin and Alexandra both speak great English, so don’t be shy if you ever get to the region. Their wines are available in the U.S., see here. For German and European readers, they also offer shipping, so just send them an email. It is well worth it.

Photo finish with Konstantin in the middle

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Jul 10 2012
10 Comments
Germany, Mosel, Wineries

Meeting the vintners: Weingut Meierer in Kesten (Mosel), Germany

The first winery we visited on our recent Germany trip was Weingut Meierer in Kesten at the Mosel. Kesten is small village located between the two much more famous Brauneberg (with the Brauneberger Juffer, read more about that spectacular vineyard here) and Piesport (with Piesporter Goldtröpfchen). I, frankly, was not really aware of this village before I stumbled across the vintner, Matthias Meierer, on a friend’s facebook page. Kesten is unique in that the hills that rise behind it stretch from the Juffer all the way to the Goldtröpfchen. You can see photos of the spectacular landscape on the winery’s appealing website. I like to add new wineries to my agenda whenever I go, thereby expanding my knowledge and not missing out on new trends. This visit at Meierer was a first for me.

The village of Kesten

The Meierer winery’s history stretches back to 1767, but it is a far cry from traditional or boring. The 29 year old Matthias, who is running the winery with his father Klaus, has radically reduced the number of wines they offer: A core of three wines for each three categories of residual sugar: dry, off-dry, and sweet.  As a rule of thumb, within these categories they produce a basic wine (Kestener), a medium bodied village-style wine (called Kestener Paulinsberg), and a more sophisticated wine from the Paulinshofberg. This makes the whole, at times confusing labelling and categorizing of German wines much more approachable. There are a few additional wines that round out the wine list.

View towards Brauneberger Juffer

A few words about Matthias. After he earned a degree from Geisenheim, Germany’s top notch college for wine growing and making, he started working for the well-reknown winery of Fritz Haag in Brauneberg five years ago. At the same time, he began working in the family winery. Today, he is working 3 days a week for Fritz Haag and 4 for Meierer (talk about lazy Germans, huh?). He is also a lecturer at Trier University. Also, he was named young winemaker of the year in 2008 by the German Agriculture Association (DLG). Oh, and did I mention he is a pretty cool guy? Communication was easy and swift when I arranged the tasting via email, and he was patient with my dithering about when to do it.

Screw cap art…

Their grapes grow on 6 hectares (about 15 acres) of land around Kesten. For them, 2011 was a picture perfect year. While the year started out very cold, spring was warm and very dry which led to their earliest ever blossoming around 20 April. The cooler summer slowed down vegetation, which was good given that growth was about 3 weeks ahead of schedule. On 26 August hails with corns as big as tennis balls hit the middle Mosel valley, but the grapes survived this miraculously. September brought tons of sun and temperatures around 30 C so that they began the harvest early on 4 October with high yields and sugar levels in the grapes. The last harvesting was done end of October and fermentation went quicker than in the last years with the last wines being ready by beginning of February.

New label, row of tried wines

Our friend Helge tagged along, and off we went down the beautiful Mosel valley on June 15. Matthias and his girlfriend Sabrina were waiting for us in their tasting room with a spectacular view. We tried a total of 10 wines and were quite impressed. The wines had been filled in early to mid-April and were all ready for drinking already. Often, wines take a bit longer to settle down after bottling. I will write about some wines in seperate posts, but here are some of my summaries.

The three dry wines we tried were all of exceptional quality, and a nice introduction to many more dry surprises over that weekend. 2011 really has been good to dry rieslings. The 2011 Kestener dry, the basic wine, was the perfect summer wine: gooseberry and herbs in the nose, awesome acidity and freshness with a nice finish. I also enjoyed the Kestener Paulinsberg with its mineralic and incredibly fresh nose and the great fruit notes on the palate.

My notes

Among the three off-dry wines, I used the words “very balanced” in my notes the most. The basic riesling is wonderfully mild and pleasant, while the 2011 Kestener feinherb (off-dry) has a nose of sweet fruits and alcohol (it has 11% vol.) and gives you a full mouth of ripe fruit.

The sweet wines were also very convincing, notably the Kestener Paulinsberg Spätlese (more about that and the Kabinett in a seperate post). The nose on the Kestener Paulinshofberg Auslese was clear and structured, before strawberry, vanilla, and caramel candy came by. It was pretty awesome, just as its taste of very ripe fruit.

The weirdest thing we tried was his 2011 WTF!?, which I will write about in a seperate post….I have got to keep you hooked, right?

Awesome winebox: Beware Glass! – Beware Riesling!

We had a great two hours with Matthias and Sabrina. They were pleasant hosts, and English comes to them naturally whenever something was not clear for Nina in German. I highly recommend visiting the winery. It is definitely a rising star, and the prices are very reasonable. I am glad I can add this to the growing list of wineries I want to visit when I go back.

You can get some of their wines in the U.S. through the wine merchant SRS. For German and European readers: Use the contact site to ask for a wine list. They also have very affordable trial offers including shipping.

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