A pile of culled vines, infected with Goldgelbe Vergilbung; photo credit: Wachter-Wiesler
In slanting early morning light, a shadow crosses a vineyard. The figure moves row by row, ripping out vines and casting them onto a large, burning pyre. The blaze stretches to greet the sun as it rises above a mountainous horizon. There is fire from all points of the compass. Death is in the air. The culprit is a phytoplasm fatal to Vinifera vines. Its spread is aided by the American grapevine leafhopper (Scaphoideus titanus), a dwarf cicada native to North America. As it feasts on the vines, it transmits the pathogen of what is known in German as Goldgelbe…
Kevin Puls works in advertising and PR. His passion for Austrian wine began nearly two decades ago and he's regularly tasted the vintages of the Alpenrepublik from the Wachau to Styria. His weakness for estates that work organically and for natural wines started with Gut Oggau's 2007 vintage. He's also a regular visitor to Franken. He blogs about food, wine, and the people who make them.
Weingut Blankenhorn It wasn’t love at first sight for Martin and Yvonne Männer of Weingut Blankenhorn in Schliengen. On a trip to Switzerland in spring 2015, they were initially disappointed by the Gutedel (a.k.a. Chasselas) they found there. Or, to be more precise: by how the vintners they encountered vinified it. But when they ordered a bottle of 18-year-old Chasselas Médinette Dézalay Grand Cru from Domaine Louis Bovard on their last night in Geneva, at the Michelin-starred Le Chat-Botté, they realized they had found the key to making a multifaceted, indeed divine Gutedel. Ever since, Langlebigkeit, or longevity, has been part of Weingut Blankenhorn’s DNA. Their wines tell a…...
We like to think of Mosel wine as eternally glorious. The river valley’s nearly 2,000-year vinous history, its relics of Roman civilization and tributes to Celtic wine gods, its very viticulture carved with seeming permanence into stony banks all suggest an unbroken line. But an excellent new book, edited by Lars Carlberg, with able assistance from David Schildknecht, Kevin Goldberg, and Per Linder, underscores the extent to which the Mosel’s glory has been far more ebb than flow. Such awareness only makes the late 19th-century golden age that is the book’s focus more luminous. The book nests together several components…....
On Saturday 13 September, Germany lost a winemaking legend when Werner Näkel passed away at the age of 72 in Dernau, his home village in the Ahr Valley and seat of the family estate, Weingut Meyer-Näkel. Werner Näkel will be remembered as a founding father of great German Pinot Noir, a wine which under the name of Spätburgunder had for a long time simply languished in the vinous doldrums of Germany, before, in the 1980s, Näkel and a handful of like-minded colleagues began to wonder why the grape, so highly revered worldwide for its red Burgundy renditions, should not be…...
A jack of all trades is inherently a master of none. While finding the right focus can help, that is often easier said than done. Sometimes a more drastic solution is needed. Intervention, anyone? Rheinhessen! I’m so glad you could make it today. Won’t you join us? Feel free to grab something to eat before you sit. There’s coffee, tea, and water. And a big box of tissues, in case we need those later. Wine? No, at least not like that. But I’m glad you raise the issue, because wine is actually what’s brought us together here. I know this won’t be…...
Slopes tilting toward shimmering water; a long, cool growing season; and shallow slate soil — to a connoisseur of German wines, these features immediately evoke the storied Mosel region. Yet they also describe a much younger wine-growing area: New York State’s Finger Lakes, or FLX. Long dismissed as a producer of tourist-friendly sweet wines made from non-vinifera grapes, the Finger Lakes now give life to vintages that express grape and terroir with nuance and sophistication. These include wines created by German-born winemakers, such as Johannes Reinhardt at Kemmeter Wines and Peter Weis at Weis Vineyards, as well as those who trained…...
