Germany seems to require an official examination for everything. Qualitätsweine (“quality wines”) are no exception. Those that fail the test are slapped with the Landwein label. In April 2015, a group of top growers from Baden, deep in Germany’s southwest, joined forces to rebel against the official inspection system. Flouting what officials would think of as a demotion, they decided to wear Landwein as a badge of honor. Baden has long been seen as the kinder, more conventional Germany. Thus Landwein is a direct challenge to that sensibility, one that takes on more significance because it seemed the unlikeliest of places for revolt. It happened the way so many…
Katharina Matheis is German wine journalist. She was born and raised amid the vineyards of Rheinhessen and worked fo several years as a reporter for WirtschaftsWoche before training as a certified sommelier. Since then she has focused on topics in wine. Her articles have appeared in Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche, Gault&Millau, Spiegel, Feinschmecker, and more. Her favorite subject to cover is organic viticulture. Together with Sven Prange she recently founded the guide sustainable enjoyment neigschmeckt-magazin.de. She lives in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg.
Kitzingen has never been particularly famed as a mecca for winemaking in Franken. So when I received an invitation to visit this town, 20 km southeast of Würzburg, for a wine presentation by the New Kitz & Friends, I had little reason to suspect it would mutate into a natural wine hub. At this point, New Kitz & Friends are hardly unknowns – certainly not in this magazine. Colleague Rainer Schäfer recently profiled this group of unconventional locals and newcomers, all moving in a cosmic orbit around the pioneering natural wine estate 2Naturkinder. For this event, the New Kitz called…...
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…...
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…...
The story starts with a pedicure and a camping van. Each year when the German wine queen visits New York City, Paul Grieco treats her to a pedicure. (If the queen’s mother is also visiting, she gets one, too.) Grieco is a sommelier, vocal Riesling advocate, and owner/manager of Terroir wine bar in New York. He is also part jester, reveling in the micro-tradition of the pedicure while also pointing toward the intellectual esteem in which he holds every queen he’s ever met. Grieco honors the queens, he said, “because we [at Terroir] are fans of history and culture and [the queens] are an…...
At 31, Isabella (“Bella”) Keller-Rutayungwa is already a force in German wine. She’s an entrepreneur who launched her own wine import company, a Master of Wine student, the mind behind a globally popular pop-up bar, a part-time grower at Weingut Keller, one of Germany’s most respected estates — and the newest member of German wine’s highly respected “royal family.” Beyond all this, what sets Keller-Rutayungwa apart is her conviction that fine wine (she prefers a different term) is for everyone. Her mindset is already changing how people approach the wines she champions. She’s got a winning backstory, smart ideas around…...
