Sachsen's Schloss Wackerbarth, photo credit: Norbert Millauer
André Gussek remembers very clearly how it all got started: Right around the time he was hired as cellar master at the historic eastern German Kloster Pforta winery in 1982, “the first Spätburgunder vines, West German clones obtained via foreign trade,” arrived at the estate in Naumburg an der Saale, roughly 60 kilometers from Leipzig and some 220 kilometers from Berlin. “In the fog of history, it was difficult to see precisely where they came from,” Gussek explains with characteristic calm. Much clearer is what they became: a catalyst for red wine to assume “an ever-larger role” in the former…
Rainer Schäfer writes about what he values most: wine, food, and soccer. The first wine that impressed him as a teenager was a Silvaner from Endingen, grown in the vineyard of his Kaiserstühl relatives. He's lived in Hamburg for 30 years and travels the wine regions of the world, always curious about dazzling personalities, surprising experiences, and unknown pleasures.
The quiet whirr of my high-speed German train is a soothing reminder of Europe’s classy public transit I so miss in America. I’m headed south from Frankfurt towards a gentle landscape of vineyards, orchards and villages near the Rhine River and my Jewish father’s hometown. I’m much less comfortable with the muted conversations surrounding me. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, I grew up instinctively wary of the German language and all things German. I’m on a symbolic journey alone back to Landau, the market town where my grandfather Heinrich Levy was a winemaker in the Pfalz in 1920s and ‘30s,…...
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…...
As I peer out the window of a train from Hamburg, I understand why Sylt, sometimes referred to as “the Hamptons of Germany,” is such a popular destination for German vacationers. I can feel the tension of travel slipping away with the mainland as the tracks cross the shallow waters of the Wadden Sea and approach the sweeping, sandy landscape of this North Frisian island. Nils Lackner, a charismatic sommelier, tour guide, and regional expert based here, picks me up at the station, wondering how Sylt ended up on my radar since so few Americans are aware of it. I…...
I’ve been a fan of B sides since, well, pretty much since there have been B sides. Record companies have historically used vinyl’s flipside as a holding pen for unreleased or less desirable concept material. Pieces that don’t fit the brand; supplementary songs with minimal hopes and lower aspirations. Filler. Yet, to me B sides embody the edgy and unpredictable, the vulnerable creative underbelly of both artist and medium. Let’s call rosé, the pink “wunder” of the last decade, our A side. Industry figures show that rosé now constitutes some 9% of the global wine market. Thirty-nine percent of wine drinkers in…...
Trink Magazine | That viticulture is still possible in Germany's Saale-Unstrut in an age of climate crisis is due to the microclimate of the valleys and the perseverance of its growers.
The future of the Mosel Apollo butterfly and its habitat of the Mosel terraces are endangered. Can a solution be found that allows both to continue to coexist?
