Freddie Gibbs (l), Robert Dentice (center), Madlib(r)
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 up…
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).
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…...
Words are like viruses. They appear in culture and may lie dormant then suddenly they are everywhere, swirling about, adapting to their hosts, mutating to survive. In the wine world, this process can happen fast. "Purity," it turns out, is anything but pure.
Winemakers in the Mosel are tending an old tradition that is budding anew. These modern Pinots reach for elegance and complexity, edginess and vitality. and the world is finally taking notice.
I’ve been a fan of B sides since, well, pretty much since there have been B sides. Record companies have historically used vinyl’s flipside as a holding pen for unreleased or less desirable concept material. Pieces that don’t fit the brand; supplementary songs with minimal hopes and lower aspirations. Filler. Yet, to me B sides embody the edgy and unpredictable, the vulnerable creative underbelly of both artist and medium. Let’s call rosé, the pink “wunder” of the last decade, our A side. Industry figures show that rosé now constitutes some 9% of the global wine market. Thirty-nine percent of wine drinkers in…...
Silvaner. It’s complicated. Ask about its nature or character, and like as not you’ll get one answer: asparagus. With delicate vegetal aromas and moderate acidity, Silvaner is indeed a near perfect pairing for the fabled stalk that emerges from the earth to fill German grocery stores and market stalls annually between April and June. Yet, stop for a minute and imagine: what if there were more? Silvaner is viewed as a national counterpoint to Burgundian Chardonnay or Saumur Chenin Blanc. For many years Silvaner was Germany’s most important grape variety, less inclined toward fruity fun and more toward structure, texture, spice, and earth. De facto it…...
It is a landscape rife with charms and challenges: From their perch atop the Oberrotweiler Eichberg, on a long-dormant volcano that rises to 310 meters, Johannes Landerer and Jakob Moise can enjoy some of the finest views over the Kaiserstuhl and sprawling Rhine Basin in Baden. The early morning sun is quickly rising, but the Kaiserstuhl, normally a place of striking warmth, has seen an unusual amount of precipitation in the summer of 2024, leaving it greener than at any time in recent memory. But if this pair of Kaiserstuhl winegrowers agree on anything, it’s that this situation is likely…...
