Skin-contact white wines may have their revolutionary roots in Georgia, Slovenia, and Friuli, but the umlaut zone also stakes a strong claim for orange expressions. Austria was an early and highly successful adopter (think Tschida and Tscheppe, Muster and Meinklang). For this, thank geographic proximity, shared traditions, a former empire’s worth of fascinating white varieties, and the remarkable open-mindedness of producers, especially in Styria and Burgenland. Germany came later to the game. The country has been slower to embrace natural and experimental styles generally and its signature variety, Riesling, requires an exceptionally deft hand to succeed in skin-fermented form. However, German…
Valerie Kathawala specializes in the wines of Germany, Austria, South Tyrol, and Switzerland, as well as those closer to her home in New York City. Her work appears in the pages of Noble Rot, Full Pour, SevenFifty Daily and a number of other tolerant publications.
In the first movement of this piece, we looked at the origins of Ludwig van Beethoven’s interest in wine and the critical role this played in shaping the composer’s musical career. Here, we trace his path through Vienna’s living landscape, to find multiple points of intersection between past and present in his music and in some of the city’s defining wines. We then head south to the Austrian spa region of Baden, where Beethoven drank, and composed, masterpieces. As we will find, his music comes more vividly to life when appreciated within the context of the vines and landscapes in which it was written…...
It’s an unfortunate paradox: the very climatic conditions that leave us thirsting for lightweight, refreshing and soul-satisfying dry wines render these hard to achieve. Yet, rather than leading the way in surmounting this viticultural challenge, Germany’s Riesling establishment routinely throws up roadblocks. That’s a crying shame. THE CURIOSITY OF “KABINETT” To understand what’s become of “Kabinett trocken,” we must first retrace the steps leading to “Kabinett.” “Cabinet,” as a term applied to German Riesling, dates to 18th-century Rheingau, a derivative of “Cabinetstück” (alternatively, “Kabinet[t]stück”), in use for diverse objects worth displaying in a cabinet of curiosities or, by extension, worthy literary and…...
Confession time: Which wine and food pairings make your eyes roll faster than a teenager’s? Champagne and strawberries? Pizza and Lambrusco? Muscadet and oysters? In southern Germany, Silvaner and white asparagus are regional marketing 101. Silvaner has been praised and prized as a pairing for the spring stalk to such an extent that grocers will double their inventories of cheap Silvaner and stack it by the case in the vegetable section. And while the fastest way to get a screenful of Internet ill-will slung in your direction is to suggest the pairing to a German wine group, it is true…...
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…...
