Piri Naturel is Christine Pieroth’s independent line of natural wines in Germany’s Burg Layen. Her wines bring a breath of fresh air to more straightforward Nahe’s wine scene.
Stephanie Hanel, born in Munich, Bavaria, and therefore as a young adult more familiar with beer than wine, became a wine lover with her first contact with natural wine at 2Naturkinder, then dove into the Brooklyn world of natural wines, where winemakers are rock stars, and the variety of wines feels like it could never end. Best memory: summer day with heavy rain, sitting by an open window in a wine bar (only selling Italian natural
wine) and picking some olives and cheese, sipping through one and another glass. Career path: author of multimedia-productions, project manager at a publishing company, content manager of a business network, scientific communicator, composing texts about family-owned German brands and companies, editing and contributing for the website of Naturweinwelt,
and authoring books.
On a chilly April morning, I sat in the tasting room of an renowned old Alsatian winery, under the spell of an enchanting rose-and-peach-inflected, off-dry Gewurztraminer from vines right outside the winery’s door. I chatted with the person pouring the wine. They asked what brought me to Alsace. I answered that I had just studied German bread baking at the Akademie Deutsches Bäckerhandwerk. “I’ve never thought about German bread before,” they responded. We were less than 30 kilometers from the German border, in a town with a German name, at a winery with a German name. But they’d never even…...
April arrived like a lamb and went out like a lion, leaving a swath of massive frost damage in its wake for the 2024 vintage.
“When I started drinking wine, wine was French,” my father told me recently over dinner at Scheepskameel, a Dutch restaurant known for its excellent wine menu. He never spends more than 10 euro on a bottle, and rarely drinks white, but that evening he unexpectedly admitted, he preferred our glass of German Riesling to our bottle of red Bordeaux. A few days later, I hosted a Riesling tasting for some serious wine friends. They have accounts with posh traders and their own cellars, which are typically stocked with Burgundies and Bordeaux. They were impressed. But, I wondered, would they buy…...
Müller-Thurgau was a blessing and a curse for 20th-century Germany. Emily Campeau asks whether new respect from growers can make a contender in the 21st.
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…...
The historic German wine club faces a crossroads.
© 2026, TRINK Magazine. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from TRINK.
