Watercolor by Werner Krumsiek, used with permission of artist
By Rudolf Trossen The sun recedes, the summer wanes,the ripe grapes long since gifted.A chill arrives under the guise of evening wind,Long shadows stretch heavy like leadacross golden vineyards’ last light. Alone on the slope,I watch in silence. But in old caskschurns young wine,roaring with the summer’s solar might,lust and longing into the night,cheering, laughing, singing bright. I bow beforethe deity’s vigor. November 1994 From the collection Was die Reben Sagen Translated September 2021…
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…...
March 25, 2024 Update: Eva Fricke and the German Wine Collection no longer together. Apparently, the tango takes even more complex footwork than either party anticipated. And the frisson of friction is real. In wine, the relationship between importer and producer works better when it’s more tango than transaction. First there is the careful footwork of their own internal negotiations, then a set of fancy steps together for the audience. The goal is to position the new producer within an aesthetic and cultural context that would-be consumers will find attractive. It is a delicate dance that requires surprising intimacy and…...
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…...
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…...
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…...
