“Free your mind and the rest will follow.” Coming from one of the co-owners of Germany’s oldest wine trading houses, one might suspect a quote from Goethe, Schiller, or Nietzsche. It’s actually the American R&B/pop group, En Vogue. And that makes for a jarring, if fitting, introduction to my conversation with these stewards of tradition in German wine that look back to 1786 in Worms as easily as they look ahead to 2019 Organic Madonna. P.J. Valckenberg has the history and the pedigree, no question. Its customers have included the Swedish royal family and Charles Dickens. In addition to a truly impressive portfolio…
Paula Redes Sidore moves smoothly between the worlds of wine and words. In 2012, she founded Weinstory, a creative content and translation agency dedicated to transposing the world of German-speaking wine into English. TRINK is the natural extension of that pursuit. She is the German and Austrian regional specialist for jancisrobinson.com and a member of the Circle of Wine Writers. Paula has a Masters degree in fiction writing, and her work has been featured in jr.com, Sevenfifty Daily, Feinschmecker, and Heated. She lives on the northern wall of wine growing with her family in Bonn, Germany.
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…...
Known to his 18,000-plus Instagram followers as @soilpimp, Robert Dentice is a German wine collector and vinyl fanatic, founder of the Riesling Study event series, and a driving force behind a brand new project called sourcematerialwine that is set to spread his evangelical zeal for German wine to the wide world. Short of spending an evening at one of his legendary Riesling-, Silvaner-, or Weissburgunder-fuelled music events — and he’d sincerely love nothing more than to have you there — the next best way to get a sense of the radiant positivity he brings to German wine is to cue…...
Whether you’re dropping into town for the bacchanalia that is Rieslingfeier or you’re a native New Yorker curious to get a taste of the latest and greatest in German and Austrian wines, here’s your hit list of bars and restaurants that make NYC the country’s best (if priciest) city to drink auf Deutsch. Updated November 2025 to remove Koloman, which has closed. G = German focus A = Austrian focus Noreetuh (G) Manager and co-owner Jin Ahn has turned this decade-old Lower East Side Hawaiian spot into the city’s ultimate insider Riesling hangout. Ahn’s exceptionally well-informed list is divided into Rieslings…...
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.
The 45-kilometer Zellertalweg hiking trail runs through the heart of the Zellertal. I have created a loop trail that builds off of this longer path and can be divided into several stages. It takes in the best-known vineyards and some of the most interesting sights featured in my forthcoming wine travel guide to Germany. For me, this is the most beautiful part of the Zellertal, naturally including the Schwarzer Herrgott in both the Pfalz and Rheinhessen. As my route diverges from the Zellertalweg at several points, use this downloadable GPX file to navigate. (Works with any standard phone-based hiking app…...
