Alpine Wines Get New Scouts
Archetype, a Portland, Oregon-based import start-up, is focused on Alpine wines. They are refining consumer’s understanding of the category and building community near and far.
Archetype, a Portland, Oregon-based import start-up, is focused on Alpine wines. They are refining consumer’s understanding of the category and building community near and far.
Journalist and Editor
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).
At a time when some Mosel producers are shedding vineyards like snakeskins, Ernst “Erni” Loosen, who already has 90 hectares at his disposal, is trying on a new one. A few years ago, a cousin of Loosen’s called to say he was selling a parcel. Lammertslay, a steep, mid-slope, two-and-a-half-hectare plot within the Wehlener Sonnenuhr, is hallowed ground for Riesling. The vines were largely wurzelecht (ungrafted), planted around 1895 in pure blue slate soil on a south-facing slope. Loosen was sold. The parcel had belonged to his great-grandfather, Dr. Zacharias Bergweiler-Prüm. Loosen saw it as a rare chance to honor…...
Franken was slower to wake up the wine counter culture revolution in Germany, but young growers are now more than making up for lost time.
By Rudolf Trossen The sun recedes, the summer wanes,the ripe grapes long since gifted.A chill arrives under the guise of evening wind,Long shadows stretch heavy like leadacross golden vineyards’ last light. Alone on the slope,I watch in silence. But in old caskschurns young wine,roaring with the summer’s solar might,lust and longing into the night,cheering, laughing, singing bright. I bow beforethe deity’s vigor. November 1994 From the collection Was die Reben Sagen Translated September 2021...
Berries without borders for some member estates in 2024?
My first, late spring 2018 visit with Marlies and Martin Abraham in their cellar on the edge of Eppan-Appiano proved an inspirational personal discovery. A young couple leaves behind former professions to follow a vinicultural dream of activism in the vineyard and minimalism in the cellar, becoming the first to vinify and bottle wine from the vineyards they have inherited: In itself, that story is nowadays (thankfully) far from unusual. But in Südtirol-Alto Adige, it’s an audacious exception. Moreover, I was amazed by how distinctly delicious were Abrahams’ interpretations of each among the four grape varieties they chose to champion, especially considering…...
Over the last decade, Berlin has established itself as a wine city. No small feat, since little quality wine is made within a five-hour driving radius. But in the early 2010s the natural wine movement brought in “small plates and natural wine” bistros and more and more distributors — independent wine stores who both import and buy wines and then sell them to both restaurants and consumers alike — are basing themselves here. The RAW wine fair made Berlin its Central European hub back in 2015. Before March 2020, business was good. Then came Covid. Putting the Neighbor back in Neighborhood at…...
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