The Last of Their Kind: Germany’s Treasury of Old Vine Riesling
The power, pride and potential of old vines. And it turns out, the Mosel really could be where it all started..
The power, pride and potential of old vines. And it turns out, the Mosel really could be where it all started..
Christoph Raffelt is one of an exciting new vanguard of voices when it comes to German wine. And voices is not a euphemism here, as it is indeed his voice together with his stellar cast of winemakers and guests that come together on his monthly podcast Originalverkorkt.de; while his words appear in his online magazine of the same name. He's been on the road since 2016 with Büro für Wein & Kommunikation as a freelance journalist, copywriter and all-round wordsmith. His work has appeared in such esteemed publications as Meiningers, Weinwirtschaft, Weinwelt, Sommelier, Champagne-Magazin and Schluck.
Ask a German about their favorite domestic vacation spots and Bodensee — aka Lake Constance — routinely sits near the top of the list. The country’s largest lake offers plenty of water and winter sports, proximity to Switzerland and Austria, the island of Mainau, and the Reichenau peninsula with its medieval history and churches. Then ask about dream winegrowing destinations, and watch Bodensee slip way, way down the list. With a reputation for simple wines that do little more than embody lake life, it is no wonder that in recent times Bodensee has struggled to be taken seriously. But a small group of young…...
100 years ago this month, the Mosel spilled its banks. Not with water, with fury.
The story starts with a pedicure and a camping van. Each year when the German wine queen visits New York City, Paul Grieco treats her to a pedicure. (If the queen’s mother is also visiting, she gets one, too.) Grieco is a sommelier, vocal Riesling advocate, and owner/manager of Terroir wine bar in New York. He is also part jester, reveling in the micro-tradition of the pedicure while also pointing toward the intellectual esteem in which he holds every queen he’s ever met. Grieco honors the queens, he said, “because we [at Terroir] are fans of history and culture and [the queens] are an…...
April arrived like a lamb and went out like a lion, leaving a swath of massive frost damage in its wake for the 2024 vintage.
“Die Luft war raus.” The spark had vanished; the bloom was off the rose. That was the phrase circulating in the weeks before ProWein opened, in emails, on the phone, in the particular silence that greets an appointment calendar nobody has the energy to open. Executing pre-fair rituals felt like a chore. My cowboy boots weighed heavy; my playlists, uninspired. And I wasn’t alone. Wine Paris closed its seventh edition in February with 63,541 trade visitors from 169 countries, up 21 percent in a single year. My social media feed was full of smiling faces and hand-lettered “Bonjour! Bienvenue!” signs,…...
For Deandra Anderson, co-founder of Ebb & Flow Keg, a Frankfurt-based purveyor of organic kegged wines, the supposed “death of wine” among millennials isn’t a crisis, it’s a myth. In her view, the challenge is whether the German wine industry can meet the next generation where they already are.
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