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    Flood Comes for the Ahr and Its Winemakers

    From last Wednesday night into Thursday morning, 148 liters/square meter of rain fell on the Ahr. In a normal July, the region gets about 80 liters/square meter — in the entire month. This immense volume of precipitation in such a short span dilated creeks into torrents. Torrents rose and swiftly emptied into the Ahr itself, which morphed into an implacable, surging mass of water. As we’ve now all seen on the news, the river ripped through the villages that line its banks — Ahrweiler, Dernau, Mayschoss will be names familiar to German wine lovers — shocking everyone from the authorities charged…...

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    Ten Questions for Germany’s Newest Master of Wine

    A fresh crop of Masters of Wine was announced late last month: Ten individuals who have grasped the holy grail of wine education. Among them is Moritz Nikolaus Lüke of Bonn — the tenth German to achieve the distinction. He joins an elite crew who have earned the title by passing legendarily rigorous blind tasting examinations and writing a series of theory papers as well as a research-based thesis. TRINK caught up with Lüke to find out what the experience was like, learn about his Covid-driven research paper — and get an answer to the question we’re all naturally most curious about: what he drank…...

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    12 Questions for Terry Theise

    Terry Theise. Until quite recently, I would have written “an importer of German and Austrian wine who needs no introduction.”  But over the past year, the axis of wine, not to mention the world, has shifted. A slew of new wine lovers might just need to be brought up to speed on this pioneering champion of “umlaut-bearing wines” (a term Theise coined long before we or anyone else). Theise fell for German wine and wine culture while living in Munich in his 20s. When he returned to the U.S. in the early 1980s, he brought this zeal back with him. He…...

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    The Vanished Cellar

    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,…...

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    Get to Know German-Speaking Orange Wines

    Skin-contact white wines may have their revolutionary roots in Georgia, Slovenia, and Friuli,  but the umlaut zone also stakes a strong claim for orange expressions.  Austria was an early and highly successful adopter (think Tschida and Tscheppe, Muster and Meinklang). For this, thank geographic proximity, shared traditions, a former empire’s worth of fascinating white varieties, and the remarkable open-mindedness of producers, especially in Styria and Burgenland. Germany came later to the game. The country has been slower to embrace natural and experimental styles generally and its signature variety, Riesling, requires an exceptionally deft hand to succeed in skin-fermented form. However, German…...

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