Volume 02 – Life in the Bubble

December 2020

Marie-Louise Raumland degorging a bottle of Sekt in the open doorway of her Rheinhessen sekt cellar Sektgut Raumland

Dear Readers,

As we pulled together Issue 2, the usual holiday theme of bubbles surfaced. At first, we brushed it away. Too obvious, too discordant with our strange, dark times. But then we reconsidered. Bubble as metaphor. Bubbles, as Anne Krebiehl MW writes in our pages, as magnifiers. Bubbles as a state of being.

We’ve all been surviving in strange bubbles for the better part of a year now. We’ve had to think hard about who we let in and how to deal with it when someone leaves. What has this done to our sense of connection, to our capacity for celebration?

Then again, sometimes a bubble is just a bubble — and a beautiful one at that.

We’ve worked hard to furnish you with more than enough fireside material for the long nights ahead. Fill your glasses and your minds with thought-provoking, evocative, informative perspectives from our growing stable of contributors. Our hope, as always, is that each piece will prove a jumping-off point, a reason to engage with each other. A chance to carry the conversation forward as well as change it.

Wishing you and your families the best possible holiday and true happiness in the New Year,

Paula Redes Sidore, Bad Honnef
Valerie Kathawala, New York

  • Canton of Zürich: Tiny Wine World, Top Pinot Noirs

    ByFrank Scherp

    Pinot Noir from Switzerland? Gantenbein! Donatsch! Hardly another country exists whose reputation among international wine lovers for producing quality wines from this variety boils down to just two names. It’s high time that other Swiss producers get some of that spotlight – and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t come from the Canton of Zürich.  Deutschschweiz, the sizable swath of eastern Switzerland that is German-speaking, is Pinot Noir land.  Reportedly, the vine was introduced to Graubünden in 1631 by the Duke of Rohan, as a gift to local farmers, to win them over as mercenaries during the 30 Years War…....

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    The Art and Science of Martin and Andi Nittnaus

    ByBart De Vries

    Shaping our wines is like sculpting: you start with a rock and you chisel out the sculpture,” Martin Nittnaus, 34, states confidently. The arts are never far away when you speak to the oldest son of winemakers Anita and Hans Nittnaus. Like his father, who dreamt of becoming a musician, Martin never planned on a life in wine. He went to university to study English literature and philosophy. But blood is thicker than water, and this year marked his sixth vintage working the plots his father gave to him and his brother, Andreas (Andi, 31). The Nittnaus estate is in Gols,…...

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  • Eglisau: Vines of the High Rhine

    ByDennis Lapuyade

    Every guide to Swiss wine begins with the same emphatic but overly simple premise: there are six wine regions in Switzerland. That means one of them, Deutschschweiz, is forever miscast as a single entity, even though it encompasses 19 cantons and covers two-thirds of the nation’s surface area. Meanwhile, four of the other official regions are single cantons — Geneva, Vaud, Valais, and Ticino — each with its own story to tell; a sixth — the Three Lakes region — is geographically contiguous, linguistically mixed and, while quite small, celebrated for its diversity. Why, I ask, is there so little…...

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  • Roter Veltliner: Comeback of a Diva?

    ByDaniela Dejnega

    Though its name suggests otherwise, Roter Veltliner isn’t a red wine grape at all. Yet at maturity the grapes do take on a scarlet hue. And this juxtaposition is precisely what captivated Austrian winemaker Toni Söllner: “Even as a child, I was fascinated by Roter Veltliner. The grapes were red, but the wine they made was colorless.” Söllner’s organic estate is in Wagram, Roter Veltliner’s home turf. He has restored 2.5 ha to the old autochthonous variety. Söllner is not alone in his engagement on behalf of the rarity, but rather is one of 10 Austrian organic growers who have…...

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  • 3 Can’t-Miss Austrian Sparkling Wines

    ByDaniela Dejnega

    Austrian sparkling wines are filled with adventure, from serious Winzersekt (Austria’s answer to grower Champagne) to the refreshing fizz of pét-nat, a style the country was quick to embrace. The adoption of a three-tiered quality pyramid for Austrian sparkling wine in 2015 helped set the stage. The book 111 Austrian Wines You Must Not Miss includes nine sparkling wines that illustrate this effervescent trend. Three I’d like to spotlight here are the outstanding Winzersekte of Ebner-Ebenauer and Fred Loimer, which represent the absolute pinnacle of quality, as well as a pét-nat that was one of the first to make a splash…...

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    Weingut Heinrich: Finding Freedom in Less

    ByNils Kevin Puls

    ​It takes little to be happy. And he who is happy is king.”  This 19th-century German song – with just two lines – expresses how good a simple life, with little, can be. Just how little is something each of us has experienced, almost daily, this year. Finding the joy in this can be difficult, and regrettably few have managed to perceive the freedom in “less.”   Two people who did so long ago are Heike und Gernot Heinrich of Weingut Heinrich in Austria’s Burgenland. I visited them in early September, during Europe’s pandemic lull. The timing couldn’t have been better…....

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  • Eat & TRINK | Alpkäse and Kamptal Riesling

    ByUrsula Heinzelmann

    12/14/2020 Eat & TRINK | Alpkäse and Kamptal Riesling By Ursula Heinzelmann ​ The entirely spontaneous, yet infinitely harmonious tinkling of cow bells. The crunching of my boots along a narrow mountain path. The joyous gurgling of a stream winding its way down among rocks, moss, and roots. This is one of my favorite cheese soundtracks. The accompanying “smelltrack” is of warm stables in the haze of first light and earthy, pungent bodies, redolent of the basic facts of life. Wood smoke rising from under a round copper vat. And of course the reassuring, lactic aroma of warm milk and whey,…...

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    He Who Controls the Spice Controls the Universe

    ByCarrie Dykes

    Picture yourself at a German holiday market (if such things were happening in 2020) — a mug of glühwein in hand and the scent of fresh pfeffernuss cookies in the air. It’s no surprise that these warm, spicy aromas are key attributes in many wines from Germany and Austria, South Tyrol, and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. And there’s a hidden world of compounds and precursors to thank for this distinctive and alluring range. Much like a chef in the kitchen, growers can influence the aromatic and flavor complexity of their wines by playing with soil type, exposition, vine age,…...

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    Sektlaune Is a Sparkling State of Mind

    BySebastian Bordthäuser

    Sekt embodies free spirit, hedonism, even — in its blatant disregard for rules — punk. The limitless maximization of lust for life and the unadulterated joy of the sensual assume the spotlight, while ethics and morals are asked to exit stage left. Whether it’s to christen a ship, toast a victory, or celebrate a birthday in the office (back when we did things like this), bubbles embrace the sparkling side of everyday life. A flash of glam on an otherwise wretched Tuesday afternoon. Sekt is bound to nothing and to no one, neither to food nor occasion. And that’s why…...

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    It Takes Two: Eva Fricke and Jenna Fields

    ByKathleen Willcox

    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…...

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    Sekt: The Chequered History

    ByAnne Krebiehl

    For the longest time, Sekt was a dirty word. It stood for bottles of inexpensive, easy fizz with obnoxious plastic corks to be found on the street, next to the debris of spent fireworks, on New Year’s Day. Leftovers from high jinks and cheap thrills the night before. But that was then. Today, Sekt’s star is once again on the rise. We cannot even say that it is returning to its former glory because the story of German Sekt today is unprecedented and, quite literally, effervescent. It was the 20th century that destroyed with consummate efficiency what was once so promising, so frivolous,…...

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