Trink Magazine Articles

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    Mason Washington and the Pull of German Roots

    ByValerie Kathawala

    Mason Washington wants to set himself apart in the wine world. He’s convinced his German identity is the ticket.   The 24-year-old digital media marketer grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a small city in the American south that Washington charitably describes as being “what you make of it.” It was an unlikely place for a young Black man to be raised in a German family. But his grandmother Ingrid, a native of Berlin, and his mother, Carmen, born in Munich, were just that. “The biggest thing for me is the German heritage on my mom’s side,” says Washington. Now, he’s digging into…...

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    Nahe – Welcome to Germany’s Wild West

    ByPaula Redes Sidore

    Some say it lacks the historical cache of the Rheingau, the legendary vineyard names of the Mosel, or the easy charm of neighboring Rheinhessen. There are no convenient river boats to ferry you between wine villages, nor even particularly good train connections. No argument: the Nahe [NAHH-heh] Valley demands that you put in a bit of work to explore its more far-flung corners.  The reward for those efforts is some of the most objectively fascinating landscapes, geology, climate, and wines anywhere in Germany. In fact, things can get downright adventurous in Germany’s version of the (Wine) Wild West. From the…...

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  • Releasing the Power of Hidden Sweetness

    ByDavid Schildknecht

    “Dry” describes what wine drinkers overwhelmingly profess to desire. And “trocken” can only appear on labels of German Rieslings with less than 10 grams of residual sugar.  If one desires sweetness, there is no lack: Most of today’s Kabinetts are higher in sugar than were Auslesen of the 1980s. (Granted, the grapes were probably also higher in must weight.) Aesthetically as well as commercially, success in the realm of legal dryness—Trockenheit—as well as that of pronounced sweetness, can scarcely be denied. German Riesling growers have long since succeeded in proving that they too can render world-class dry wine, while simultaneously…...

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    The New Teachings of Old Field Blends

    ByNils Kevin Puls

    The year is 1806. The date June 17th. Privy Councilor Goethe sits in Frankfurt — high and dry. He reaches for his quill and writes a letter to a friend: “Send me some Würzburger wine, for no other wine satisfies, and I am morose without my accustomed favorite drink.”  While the line may not be poetic, the composition Johann Wolfgang von Goethe thirsted for is. The wine in question was, quite possibly, “Frentsch” (local dialect for Altfränkischer Satz or Old Franconian Mixed Set): a field blend of some 20 grape varieties, all planted, harvested, and fermented together. What once gave growers a bit of…...

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  • Six Swine Wines in the Steiermark

    BySebastian Bordthäuser

    12/17/2021 Swine Wines in the Steiermark By Sebastian Bordthäuser ​ In mid-October, Koch.Campus invited guests to a first-class pig-out in Trautmannsdorf, in Steiermark. “Going Whole Hog!” was the stated theme: two days of digging into the question of what differentiates the various heritage breeds from one another, and which provides the best meat. This combination of swine and wine catapulted the topic into the Champions League, and raised equally enthralling questions: Is there such a thing as terroir pork? Which wines are best suited to pair with various breeds? How much raw pork can I sample at 8 in the…...

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  • Tom Litwan

    ByDaniel Schönberger

    ​Trained mason Tom Litwan began crafting elegant yet edgy, biodynamic, low-intervention Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays in Switzerland’s Aargau back in 2006. Today his wines play in the same league as top French and German producers. Normally, the Aargau is better known for its notoriously jammed locations along the A1 highway connecting Zürich with Bern and French-speaking Switzerland. The canton’s sole claim to gustatory fame is a carrot cake, Aargauer Rüeblitorte. Litwan’s decision to make wine here may initially surprise, but looking a bit closer, it actually makes a lot of sense. Before phylloxera bedeviled the old world at the end of…...

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    What to Drink When a Somm Comes to Dinner

    ByChris Losh

    It is Friday night and I’m terrified. In 24 hours, a top sommelier is coming to our house for dinner. A sommelier who puts together the wine lists for a global restaurant group; a sommelier who has spent over 30 years training more somms than I’ve seen typos on a wine list; a sommelier who matches food and wine the way the rest of us match our Sunday outfits. And tomorrow, I’m responsible for the wine. My wife draws up a shopping list for the meal, blissfully unconcerned. “We’re not a restaurant,” she says, “why should she expect Michelin-starred cooking?”…...

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    Riesling, Weed, and the Creative Cosmos of Skinny Pablo

    ByValerie Kathawala

    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…...

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    It Takes Two: Heidi Mäkinen and Gernot Kollmann

    ByPaula Redes Sidore

    What do one of the Mosel’s oldest winemaking estates and a country with a fledgling wine-drinking culture have in common? The answer, as with most things in life, is Riesling. “German Riesling has become a synonym for white wine in Finland,”” says Heidi Mäkinen MW, Portfolio Manager for Viinitie Oy, one of that country’s largest importers of German wine. “Finns like the freshness and fruit, and Riesling is one of those wine words that’s incredibly easy to pronounce.” As Viinitie’s new portfolio manager, Mäkinen, for whom work and private life has little separation, has kicked off her holidays 2,000 kilometers south of her…...

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    Wines with a View at Winkler-Hermaden

    ByJill Barth

    12/17/2021 Wines with a View at Winkler-Hermaden By Jill Barth ​ The story of Weingut Winkler-Hermaden and its home in a striking 11th-century castle starts with a “small, tough” woman. That woman, Magdalene Helene, was current proprietor Georg Winkler-Hermaden’s grandmother. When he found her diary, which she kept from her arrival at the Schloss Kapfenstein in 1916 through WWII, he “began to read and couldn’t stop until the book was finished.”  In 1916, Magdalene Helene came to the castle as a young woman to work as a maid. Just two years later, her employer died and bequeathed the Schloss and…...

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  • Sturm und Spritz

    BySimon J. Woolf

    In 2013, I moved to Austria and spent most of a year living in the small town of Eisenstadt. There were several cultural difficulties to surmount, not least the language. Despite my decent grasp of German, I found the Austrian dialect all but impenetrable for the first few months. And then there were the drinking customs. Because Austria had forged an impressive international reputation for elegant, high-quality wines, I expected to spend my time savoring delicious Blaufränkisch, or getting to know the top single-vineyard sites of the Wachau. But everywhere I went people just drank a mix of cheap white…...

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  • Immigrants as Vineyard Workers in Alto Adige

    ByValerie Kathawala

    A tiny pilot project created by immigrants for immigrants is taking root in the small wineries of Alto Adige-Südtirol.  V.I.T.E. — Viticulture Integration Training Empowerment — is an innovative partnership that grew out of shared need. A demographic shift in this Alpine corner of northern Italy is bringing with it a shortage of skilled vineyard workers. Where grandparents and cousins once pitched in, trained immigrants from around the world may begin to take up that role. According to organizers, the beauty of this public-private approach to addressing the gap between labor supply and demand is that it also fosters understanding…...

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    Eat + TRINK | Wurstsalat as Mood Board

    ByEmily Campeau

    I felt lonely on the Internet the day I started researching the origins of Wurstsalat.  I looked in far-flung corners of the web for sausage scholars who might have dedicated time to writing about the rules and methods of this intriguing dish. When I hit a wall, I did what any well-trained millennial would do and typed #wurstsalat into Instagram’s search bar.  The things I saw there were either appetite-inducing or frightening, sometimes both at once. Lying in the cascade of pictures amidst German cowboys, balsamic glaze swirls, wedding celebrations, crinkle-cut fries, and loads of curly parsley was a possible answer: Wurstsalat is…...

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  • German and Israeli Wineries Join Forces

    ByKathleen Willcox

    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…...

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  • The Anniversary Edition: Letter from the Editors, Vol. 8

    ByTrink Magazine

    Dear Readers, Exactly one year ago today, with trembling fingers — we were fairly convinced that either no one would notice or everyone would and honestly weren’t sure which was more terrifying — we sent TRINK Vol. 01 out into the world. It was the culmination of months of planning, cajoling, researching, writing; of (often overlapping!) very late nights and wincingly early mornings, in some ways going far beyond our comfort zones while in others staying squarely within them. It was always with one overarching goal: to bring people around the world closer to German-speaking wines. Deepening an understanding of the traditions, innovations,…...

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