Above, a postcard from the German fertilizer industry of the 1920s. At the time, perspectives on soil were changing: Until then, people had spoken of plant growth as being affected by forces; afterward, it was substances. Deficiencies could simply be addressed with the help of agrochemistry. As recently as a decade ago, biodynamic viticulture could be shrugged off as “some dogma about phases of the moon and cow horns.” But now that we find a who’s who of the wine world on the member lists of relevant biodynamic organizations, it’s no longer so easy to cancel adherents to this form of farming. Those…
Romana Echensperger has worked in Germany’s top restaurants, including as head sommelier alongside chef Joachim Wissler at Restaurant Vendôme, a Michelin three-star establishment outside Köln. In 2015 she became a Master of Wine. Today, she works independently and is much in demand as a wine journalist, educator, and consultant. She has also been intensively involved in the topic of biodynamic viticulture. She is the author of “Von der Freiheit den Richtigen Wein zu Machen: Biodynamisches Winzerhandwerk im Portrait.”
The one piece of German wine law I thought I fully understood was the Prädikat system. First, I memorized the Prädikat levels. Later, I memorized the minimum must weights. I pushed aside my frustration that the sweetness of a wine did not correspond with Prädikat level — accepting that residual sugar wasn’t part of the system. Before visiting Germany, I never expected that the lack of consistency in sweetness for Prädikat wines would be an ongoing point of tension in the very country that came up with the system. Or, that by prioritizing origin over Oechsle degrees, Germany’s renowned wine organization Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter (VDP) would in essence dismiss the…...
What does one drink, when one doesn’t drink? Isabella Steiner opts for an oat milk latte. On the sun-kissed, hipster corner of Berlin known as Paul-Lincke-Ufer, a line for almond croissants forms from a crowd that looks more house party than home office. Steiner takes her spot, her poodle-mix by her side. Steiner and her business partner, Katja Kauf, manage Nüchtern Berlin, a platform for “Sober Culture — Made in Germany.” It appears to tap into something even deeper than the global wellness trend. “The selection of non-alcoholic alternatives [in Germany] rose sharply in 2020,” says 32-year-old Steiner. “This year they…...
On a chilly April morning, I sat in the tasting room of an renowned old Alsatian winery, under the spell of an enchanting rose-and-peach-inflected, off-dry Gewurztraminer from vines right outside the winery’s door. I chatted with the person pouring the wine. They asked what brought me to Alsace. I answered that I had just studied German bread baking at the Akademie Deutsches Bäckerhandwerk. “I’ve never thought about German bread before,” they responded. We were less than 30 kilometers from the German border, in a town with a German name, at a winery with a German name. But they’d never even…...
It’s hard to believe now, but Germany was once a divided country, and the East was a strange microcosm of icons of that era: Sandmännchen, Jungpioniere, and FKK-Kultur. Not to forget its sparkling ambassador, Rotkäppchensekt. Also hard to believe: a destination for wine fans has now arisen in the area between Chemnitz and Cottbus, Magdeburg and Dresden. And yet, from Berlin, the trip takes you almost 200 kilometers to the south, past Dessau and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, to a place whose name sounds to German ears disturbingly close to “Lauch” (leek). Laucha an der Unstrut has roughly 3,200 inhabitants, a bell museum, and one…...
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…...
Pinot Blanc is neither a distinctive cépage nor a particular grape variety – at least, not from the viewpoint of ampelography or genetics. And what there is of pure Pinot Blanc worldwide is nearly all rendered in German-speaking growing regions where it is typically known as Weissburgunder.
