the winegetter

Nov 17 2013

Sunday Read: The Other Side of the Mosel

Someone posted the other day that Wine Searcher, the website that a lot of us use to figure out how much a bottle of wine should be costing in the United States, is developing quickly into an exciting and well-stocked source of information on wine in general.

Case in point is this article about the “other side of the Mosel” they published in October. The title refers to the French part of the Mosel, where the river is spelled Moselle and which historically covered quite a bit of area under vine, but is now down to 65 hectares and 20 producers. But in the past, it boasted up to 30,000 hectares under vine which used to provide Champagne region with base wines. Wars and changes in ownership (the 19th and 20th century rivalry over Alsace between Germany and France) led to the near demise of the region.

But apparently, it is coming back and plans to expand by 2020. While I am spending this weekend at the German Mosel, I am wondering whether I shouldn’t have made room for some time at the other side of the Mosel…

Have a great Sunday!

Wine Searcher: The Other Side of the Mosel

Tagged AOC, Auxerrois, France, germany, mosel, Moselle, riesling, war, wine

Nov 14 2013

5 Comments

2013, Germany

Quick update from Germany

My hometown’s church

Dear friends,

just a quick update from Germany, some of you have asked how things are going.

It’s great to be back for a visit, and I am enjoying it a lot. Right after my arrival, which for various reasons brought me to the Stuttgart airport, in the south of Germany, I went to visit the Württemberg winery Kistenmacher und Hengerer. Winemaker Hans Hengerer and his wife Sabine opened their doors for me on a Sunday (after I told them that I could imagine that they had better things to do on a Sunday morning), and I spent a good three hours there. What do I say? A great three hours. We tried a host of wines, from their Rieslings to all the local varietals Clevner, Samtrot, Gelber Muskateller, a bunch of Pinot Noirs…

I am not familiar with that particular region of German wine growing, but it felt like a great introduction. I will write more about the winery shortly.

Now I am back in native Rheinhessen region, enjoying what I miss so much: the sight of Father Rhine, the vineyards on the other side, German bread, rolls and sausage meats, and just simple, enjoyable local wines. My mother and I have been hitting the theater trail, went to see Neil LaBute’s stunning, disturbing, incredible piece Bash. If ever you get a chance, I highly recommend it!

The coming weekend and some will be spent at my beloved Mosel, with seeing friends, more eating and drinking (naturally) and I am lucky to have scored tasting times at the estates Reinhold Haart (Piesport), Immich-Batterieberg (Traben-Trarbach), Kurt Hain (Piesport), Meierer (Kesten), Günther Steinmetz (Brauneberg) with room for a few more. One evening will be spent tasting some Finger Lakes Rieslings I brought with my good friend ManSoo. As you can see, most of the action will be surrounding wine…and more wineries will be visited the following week (St. Urbanshof, Karl Erbes, and Dr. Hermann).

I am truly excited about this mix of old friends and new wineries, and am looking forward to what 2012 has brought.

The biggest bummer so far has been that a tentative meeting up for joint tasting with my good friend and fellow blogger Stefano of Clicks and Corks has not come together…it would have been awesome to share these moments with him, but we both will make do, and I am looking forward to share German wine country with him another time.

That’s it for now. I hope I will get to shoot some more articles in my pipeline out over the next days and am looking forward to presenting new wineries to you soon.

Trier as seen in summer 2012 (structures left to right: Imperial Basilica from the 300s, Citizen Church from the 1300s, Cathedral foundations dating back to 300s)

Tagged germany, mosel, nackenheim, rheinhessen, trier, Württemberg, Wineries

Nov 07 2013

35 Comments

Something about wine...

Finally a Wine Century Club member!

Some of you might remember that Nina and I actively pursued membership in the Wine Century Club over the last year. In March this year, the wonderful 2007 Pirita finally brought me over the threshold of having had wines made from 100 different grapes, and shortly thereafter, Nina took the hurdle as well.

Just a short explainer: The Wine Century Club is an honors-system based club. The sole goal of the club is to encourage people to think outside of the box when buying or ordering wine. The “century” in the name refers to 100. You can only become a member, once you have tried 100 different grape varieties in wine. Membership is free and all it takes is mailing in a form (which you can find here), on which you tick off the grapes you have had. It is optional to provide the names of the wines you had the grapes in.

It took us a while to get our act together, but on June 19, 2013 did we finally send in our spreadsheets, filled with the grapes that we have consumed…and remembered. Then started a waiting period. There was no acknowledgement of receipt, and we had no idea how long it would take. I knew other friends who had also submitted their application and had not heard back by early October…I decided not to worry and wait and see. After all, the Wine Century Club is a hobby for those running it, and sometimes life just gets in the way of things.

And the wait paid off: Our membership certificates arrived, and oh man am I excited! I didn’t imagine that I would get this excited, but I definitely am. They even got the Umlaut (the two dots over my last name) right!!! The accompanying letter states that there are somewhere over 1,300 members worldwide. If they had as much fun as Nina and I did getting there, then there are 1,300 really happy folks out there!

Last week, Anatoli received his Quatro Membership certificate (for 400 grape varieties tried), so it seems like they are working on the stash of applications (and Julian and Stefano received theirs as well). But naturally, Anatoli is inspiring us to aim at least for the double membership as soon as we can! Why don’t you get into the game and try joining the club with us?

As an aside: I plan on writing from Germany as well, so there should be no significant lapses in blogging as you have seen all through October. Talk to you from the other side of the Atlantic soon!

Finally an official member!!

Tagged certificate, logo, membership, requirements, wine century club

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

the winegetter

Ramblings on wine from a German in Ann Arbor

Sunday Read: The Other Side of the Mosel

Go ahead and share!

Quick update from Germany

Go ahead and share!

Finally a Wine Century Club member!

Go ahead and share!