On Saturday 13 September, Germany lost a winemaking legend when Werner Näkel passed away at the age of 72 in Dernau, his home village in the Ahr Valley and seat of the family estate, Weingut Meyer-Näkel. Werner Näkel will be remembered as a founding father of great German Pinot Noir, a wine which under the name of Spätburgunder had for a long time simply languished in the vinous doldrums of Germany, before, in the 1980s, Näkel and a handful of like-minded colleagues began to wonder why the grape, so highly revered worldwide for its red Burgundy renditions, should not be…
Michael is likely best known for his tenure as the German wine correspondent for Jancis Robinson's website. He began his career as a wine journalist in 1982, contributing to publications like the Sunday Telegraph Good Wine Guide, the Wine Report, and Sotheby's World Wine Encyclopedia. In 1980, he became the first German to earn the Diploma of the WSET. He returned to Germany in 2009 and continued to write for publications such as FINE and Weinwisser, and has contributed to Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine for editions seven, eight, and nine (upcoming).
If there is an underdog in Germany’s largest winegrowing region, Rheinhessen, it is Scheurebe. Vinified sweet for many years, Scheurebe — pronounced SHOY-ray-beh — largely fell out of fashion. But things changed, and with the dry wine revolution in Germany over the last 20 years, Scheu is back, with — to quote Patti LaBelle — brand new ideas and a new attitude. “Scheu,” as aficionados like to call it, was bred by German viticulturist Justus Georg Scheu in 1916. Unhappy with the many highly acidic and sour Rieslings he encountered, Scheu (the man, not the grape) wanted to create a…...
Trink Magazine | Valerie Kathawala hazards forecasts for the future of wines from Alto Adige-Südtirol, Austria, Germany, and German-speaking Switzerland.
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.
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…...
