At 31, Isabella (“Bella”) Keller-Rutayungwa is already a force in German wine. She’s an entrepreneur who launched her own wine import company, a Master of Wine student, the mind behind a globally popular pop-up bar, a part-time grower at Weingut Keller, one of Germany’s most respected estates — and the newest member of German wine’s highly respected “royal family.” Beyond all this, what sets Keller-Rutayungwa apart is her conviction that fine wine (she prefers a different term) is for everyone. Her mindset is already changing how people approach the wines she champions. She’s got a winning backstory, smart ideas around…
Valerie Kathawala specializes in the wines of Germany and Austria. Her work appears in the pages of regularly in Noble Rot and SevenFifty Daily. She is the author of the "German Wine Scholar" (2025).
For most of us, it would be easier to climb the Matterhorn in flip-flops than to lay hands on a bottle of wine made by Daniel and Martha Gantenbein. The couple painstakingly grow and make minute quantities of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Riesling on 6 hectares of high Alpine valley in German-speaking Switzerland. Before the wines have even been bottled, each and every one is already sold to long-time customers. How has this modest couple, working in unheralded terrain, become the emblem of Swiss wines par excellence? After nearly 40 vintages, Daniel and Martha have fine-tuned every element within their control — from…...
If Emilio Zierock finds it hard to talk about his controversial father, you can’t tell by listening to him. He speaks with remarkable openness about the man. Rainer Zierock, who passed away in 2009, was a brilliant visionary, but also in all likelihood the grandest provocateur in post-war German and Italian viticulture. The powerfully eloquent and often choleric Zierock was considered an eccentric of note, and one who went after everyone. More than a few people also consider him a misunderstood genius, far ahead of his time. His influence on the young wine generation, and particularly the natural wine scene,…...
Sammie Steinmetz is one half of Weingut Günther Steinmetz, a mid-sized, family-run winery in Brauneberg on the Mosel. Born in Pensacola, Florida, Sammie came to Germany in 2007 as an enlisted member of the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base not far from the winery. She’d already planned on settling in the country when her term of service ended (“because Riesling,” she laughs). But a chance invitation to a wine-tasting introduced her to fifth-generation winemaker Stefan Steinmetz. Two weeks after meeting, they were dating and they married a few years later. In 2014, Sammie took early retirement from the…...
From last Wednesday night into Thursday morning, 148 liters/square meter of rain fell on the Ahr. In a normal July, the region gets about 80 liters/square meter — in the entire month. This immense volume of precipitation in such a short span dilated creeks into torrents. Torrents rose and swiftly emptied into the Ahr itself, which morphed into an implacable, surging mass of water. As we’ve now all seen on the news, the river ripped through the villages that line its banks — Ahrweiler, Dernau, Mayschoss will be names familiar to German wine lovers — shocking everyone from the authorities charged…...
The photos that German astronaut Alexander Gerst sent back from the International Space Station during summer 2018 were deeply shocking: Germany was no longer green, but brown. The only visible green in the entirety of many of the wine regions was in fact the vines. RIP cool climate? While it was common knowledge that the summer of 2018 had been exceptionally warm, few people realize it was also the warmest ever recorded. The Average Growing Season Temperature (AVGST) registered at Geisenheim/Rheingau in 2018 was 17.8° Celsius, or 0.9° (1.6° on the Fahrenheit scale) above the previous record year, 1947. However, most were…...
People imagined him to be an alchemist. Granted, it wasn’t gold his slender hands were currently molding, rather a gleaming tinted zinc capsule, encompassing perfect angles and gracing the long slender neck of a curvaceous body. While such language might seem passé in 2021, the characters who regularly participated in such frolics were not. Many were successful, most of them hailing from families older than the states whose passports they’d carry in their bespoke suits. Make no mistake: even here, the wealthier they were, the less attention to proper attire; and don’t let us get started on the unshaven angel…...
