Sammie Steinmetz is one half of Weingut Günther Steinmetz, a mid-sized, family-run winery in Brauneberg on the Mosel. Born in Pensacola, Florida, Sammie came to Germany in 2007 as an enlisted member of the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base not far from the winery. She’d already planned on settling in the country when her term of service ended (“because Riesling,” she laughs). But a chance invitation to a wine-tasting introduced her to fifth-generation winemaker Stefan Steinmetz. Two weeks after meeting, they were dating and they married a few years later. In 2014, Sammie took early retirement from the…
Valerie Kathawala specializes in the wines of Germany, Austria, South Tyrol, and Switzerland, as well as those closer to her home in New York City. Her work appears in the pages of Noble Rot, Full Pour, SevenFifty Daily and a number of other tolerant publications.
“When I started drinking wine, wine was French,” my father told me recently over dinner at Scheepskameel, a Dutch restaurant known for its excellent wine menu. He never spends more than 10 euro on a bottle, and rarely drinks white, but that evening he unexpectedly admitted, he preferred our glass of German Riesling to our bottle of red Bordeaux. A few days later, I hosted a Riesling tasting for some serious wine friends. They have accounts with posh traders and their own cellars, which are typically stocked with Burgundies and Bordeaux. They were impressed. But, I wondered, would they buy…...
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…...
The photos that German astronaut Alexander Gerst sent back from the International Space Station during summer 2018 were deeply shocking: Germany was no longer green, but brown. The only visible green in the entirety of many of the wine regions was in fact the vines. RIP cool climate? While it was common knowledge that the summer of 2018 had been exceptionally warm, few people realize it was also the warmest ever recorded. The Average Growing Season Temperature (AVGST) registered at Geisenheim/Rheingau in 2018 was 17.8° Celsius, or 0.9° (1.6° on the Fahrenheit scale) above the previous record year, 1947. However, most were…...
My twenty-something self left two gifts for the older man I would become: a doctorate in applied mathematics and four small, looseleaf notebooks. The degree opened many doors and reinforced my ability to do independent research, perform analyses, and document the results. The notebooks, along with labels from many of the bottles, form an archive of my first decade tasting wine. Between 1969 and 1979, a period covering my student and early career years, I kept detailed notes on almost everything I tasted. During most of that time, I lived in Evanston, Illinois. It was dry until 1975, necessitating runs…...
Not long ago, in my merchant days, I scored a few cases of mature Mosel wines from a grower I didn’t know. It wasn’t much wine, the prices were attractive, and I was able to eke out a few bottles for my cellar, which can never have too many ready-to-drink Rieslings. They were 1982s and 1985s. I had a wine friend over and opened one of the bottles to begin the evening’s festivities. “Oh I do like old Riesling,” my friend said, “And isn’t it amazing how well even a Kabinett can age?” “It is indeed,” I said. “But this isn’t a…...
Winemakers in the Mosel are tending an old tradition that is budding anew. These modern Pinots reach for elegance and complexity, edginess and vitality. and the world is finally taking notice.
