Photo credit The German Wine Collection/Markus Bassler
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…
Kathleen Willcox has been writing about the business and culture of wine and food for more years than she’d care to reveal. Her work appears regularly in Wine Enthusiast, Wine Searcher, SevenFifty Daily, The Vintner Project, and many other publications. She co-authored the book "Hudson Valley Wine: A History of Taste & Terroir" (2017).
Trink Magazine | Are PIWIs or grape hybrids our viticultural future as the climate crisis makes winegrowing more, not less, challenging? By Christoph Raffelt
Her child, she thinks, is a Riesling. Of all the varieties in the world, she inevitably returns to this one. There is something in the grape’s singular ability to convey fragility and strength, ephemera and eternity, that mirrors motherhood and frames the child in her mind’s eye. The child could have reflected a multiple of varieties, a blend perhaps, or a different hue. She remembers a strawberry-scented evening of pink Cinsault in a South African game lodge, bottomless glasses as sundowners, followed by a queasy morning-after, and a realization that the child — then little more than a flicker —…...
For over a year, we’ve been living with a pandemic that has shut down more than just our senses of taste and smell. It has forced us to rely on at-home experiences like a glass of wine to satisfy our longing for travel. But what do the places of our terroir dreams taste like? What exactly constitutes the origins of a wine? To use a loaded German word, how much Heimat (loosely, homeland) is in terroir? Flash back to harvest 2012. Max von Kunow of Weingut von Hövel in Germany’s Saar visits the Jurtschitsch family in Austria’s Kamptal for a vacation before his own harvest. Together…...
Gerhild Burkhard, founder of the International Sparkling Festival, reveals everything you've always wanted to know about sekt (*but were afraid to ask).
Pranzegg. In der Eben. Thomas Niedermayr. Garlider. Four names that will mean more or less to you depending on where and how you drink wine. Four small-scale organic and biodyanamic growers from four points on the compass of northern Italy’s Südtirol-Alto Adige (aka South Tyrol). Four individualists who, after years of being stuck in the corners at tastings and fairs — singled out as “crazies” for their cloudy cuvées, atypical varieties, and defiant styles — decided that being outsiders together would, at a minimum, be more fun. More off-piste than pissed-off, Freistil (“free style”) was born. South Tyrol’s trademark is mountainous diversity. A remarkable living…...
If you ask a person from Taiwan to choose the 10 dishes that best represent his or her cuisine, Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is inevitably on the list. More than a beloved national dish, the soup has become something of an obsession — like pizza to New Yorkers. Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup was created by soldiers who retreated with the Nationalist government from mainland China to Taiwan in the 1950s. For political reasons, they were banned from returning to their hometowns. Missing both family and familiar cuisine, the soldiers used local ingredients to create a dish that evoked the flavors…...
