What to Drink When a Somm Comes to Dinner
· · ·

What to Drink When a Somm Comes to Dinner

ByChris Losh

It is Friday night and I’m terrified. In 24 hours, a top sommelier is coming to our house for dinner. A sommelier who puts together the wine lists for a global restaurant group; a sommelier who has spent over 30 years training more somms than I’ve seen typos on a wine list; a sommelier who matches food and wine the way the rest of us match our Sunday outfits. And tomorrow, I’m responsible for the wine. My wife draws up a shopping list for the meal, blissfully unconcerned. “We’re not a restaurant,” she says, “why should she expect Michelin-starred cooking?”…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Riesling, Weed, and the Creative Cosmos of Skinny Pablo
·

Riesling, Weed, and the Creative Cosmos of Skinny Pablo

ByValerie Kathawala

On an early autumn night, in a quietly insiderish neighborhood of Queens, New York, deep beats and warping, hypnotic sound penetrate the stillness. Trapezoids of light slant onto the dark sidewalk through the broad windows of a corner restaurant, the music’s source. Silhouetted figures mingle and shift in projection.   Robert Dentice, noted collector of Riesling and vinyl, stands near the door, a bottle of Keller Abts E — one of Germany’s, if not the world’s, most coveted wines — in hand, greeting new arrivals with hugs and heavy pours. Inside, there’s an invitingly louche aura of fin-de-siècle Vienna or Berlin. A slew of wine is open, almost…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
It Takes Two: Heidi Mäkinen and Gernot Kollmann
· ·

It Takes Two: Heidi Mäkinen and Gernot Kollmann

ByPaula Redes Sidore

What do one of the Mosel’s oldest winemaking estates and a country with a fledgling wine-drinking culture have in common? The answer, as with most things in life, is Riesling. “German Riesling has become a synonym for white wine in Finland,”” says Heidi Mäkinen MW, Portfolio Manager for Viinitie Oy, one of that country’s largest importers of German wine. “Finns like the freshness and fruit, and Riesling is one of those wine words that’s incredibly easy to pronounce.” As Viinitie’s new portfolio manager, Mäkinen, for whom work and private life has little separation, has kicked off her holidays 2,000 kilometers south of her…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Eat + TRINK | Wurstsalat as Mood Board
·

Eat + TRINK | Wurstsalat as Mood Board

ByEmily Campeau

I felt lonely on the Internet the day I started researching the origins of Wurstsalat.  I looked in far-flung corners of the web for sausage scholars who might have dedicated time to writing about the rules and methods of this intriguing dish. When I hit a wall, I did what any well-trained millennial would do and typed #wurstsalat into Instagram’s search bar.  The things I saw there were either appetite-inducing or frightening, sometimes both at once. Lying in the cascade of pictures amidst German cowboys, balsamic glaze swirls, wedding celebrations, crinkle-cut fries, and loads of curly parsley was a possible answer: Wurstsalat is…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
German and Israeli Wineries Join Forces

German and Israeli Wineries Join Forces

ByKathleen Willcox

The Jewish State was proclaimed in 1948; the Federal Republic of Germany founded a year later. There was a pregnant pause when many wondered if West Germany would acknowledge the past. In 1951, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer acknowledged Germany’s “unspeakable crimes toward Jewish people.” The spell of silence was broken, and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Adenauer began the long, painful, still unfinished journey toward healing.  In the decades since, the people of Germany and Israel have followed their lead, with financial and cultural exchanges that each serve as a profound demonstration of human transcendence. It’s clear we have much…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Handwritten notes in a ring notebook with red cover
·

A Remembrance of German Wines Past

ByNeal Hulkower

My twenty-something self left two gifts for the older man I would become: a doctorate in applied mathematics and four small, looseleaf notebooks. The degree opened many doors and reinforced my ability to do independent research, perform analyses, and document the results. The notebooks, along with labels from many of the bottles, form an archive of my first decade tasting wine.        Between 1969 and 1979, a period covering my student and early career years, I kept detailed notes on almost everything I tasted. During most of that time, I lived in Evanston, Illinois. It was dry until 1975, necessitating runs…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
The Auslese Alchemist
·

The Auslese Alchemist

ByTorsten Schmidt

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…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Die Rebe ist ein Sonnenkind
· ·

Die Rebe ist ein Sonnenkind

ByAmanda Smeltz

for S.B. with love  Die Rebe ist ein Sonnenkind. Sie liebt den Berg und haβt den Wind.So open your door already—for god’s sake, just let me in!  Nothing to fear from wild slopes—a matter of terraces and grading.Sankt Aldegund, your roses—they labor on unforgiving slate.   Vigor derives from parameters. The desert ends with water.Ritual is an amphora: it gives life room to breathe.   The hag at the door is never a hag—she’s always a secret queen. Don’t you fear that ugly mug comes bringing revelation.  The special red plum from the Mosel is imbued with healing power.If you go to the…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Wine Meets Literature in Wiesbaden
· ·

Wine Meets Literature in Wiesbaden

ByJudy Rae Merhar

The intimate wine bar from Holger Schwedler, the size of a Texas walk-in closet, sat off a quiet pedestrian alley not far from the famous curative hot spring of Wiesbaden, the Kochbrunnen. Too small for a kitchen, the wine bar encouraged patrons to bring their own vittles, which, like the guests, included a variety...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
Hermannshöhle Hallelujah
· · ·

Hermannshöhle Hallelujah

ByClare Tooley

Her child, she thinks, is a Riesling. Of all the varieties in the world, she inevitably returns to this one. There is something in the grape’s singular ability to convey fragility and strength, ephemera and eternity, that mirrors motherhood and frames the child in her mind’s eye. The child could have reflected a multiple of varieties, a blend perhaps, or a different hue. She remembers a strawberry-scented evening of pink Cinsault in a South African game lodge, bottomless glasses as sundowners, followed by a queasy morning-after, and a realization that the child — then little more than a flicker —…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here
How Natural Wine Made Me Confront My German Problem
· · · ·

How Natural Wine Made Me Confront My German Problem

ByAlice Feiring

For a Jewish baby boomer like me, the Holocaust was always part of my DNA. Yet, I was not the child of survivors. My Polish grandparents were safely in the United States by the 1920s. The family they left behind were mostly killed. In yeshiva, where I spent a dozen years splitting my curriculum between religious and secular studies, we were frequently subjected to footage of emaciated bodies, piled up for burning or disposal. Teachers didn’t hide the numbers tattooed on their arms. But the personal horror stories my cousins told of Polish concentration camps and ghettos were the images…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here