The view from the Gasthaus patio across the South Tyrolean valley is framed by lush vegetation and floral splendor. Three weeks ahead of schedule, nature has already reached peak blossom and seems literally bursting with fertility. Wherever you look, all that can grow, does. Bees buzz, butterflies flutter, and the inn is teeming long before even the first wave of spring tourists. The regional charcuterie board arrives with a bottle of Gewürztraminer, amplifying the unrelenting sensory euphoria of flowers, landscape, sunshine, and speck. Skeptics are the ones missing out because Gewürztraminer over the Alps has never been better. Back in Germany, where Gewürztraminer’s reputation…
Sebastian Bordthäuser’s original dream was to be a rockstar. But between solos and concerts, he developed a hunger and thirst for good food and wine — and the people and stories behind them. And so trading his guitar for books, he began studying German and English literature. He spent more than a decade working in gastronomy before setting out as a freelance sommelier, author, and journalist. His work appears regularly in many of Germany's top publications, including Effilee, Welt am Sonntag, Der Feinschmecker, and Meiningers Sommelier-Magazin. Wine, food, cooking and travel remain the heart of his matter.
A baker falls in love with hiking, cake and wine in the Italian wine region of Südtirol-Aldo Adige and returns home to recreate the textures and flavors.
Silvaner. It’s complicated. Ask about its nature or character, and like as not you’ll get one answer: asparagus. With delicate vegetal aromas and moderate acidity, Silvaner is indeed a near perfect pairing for the fabled stalk that emerges from the earth to fill German grocery stores and market stalls annually between April and June. Yet, stop for a minute and imagine: what if there were more? Silvaner is viewed as a national counterpoint to Burgundian Chardonnay or Saumur Chenin Blanc. For many years Silvaner was Germany’s most important grape variety, less inclined toward fruity fun and more toward structure, texture, spice, and earth. De facto it…...
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…...
The wine stood on a high shelf, past tense very much called for, because moments after the waitress leapt for it — leapt, did not get a stool, did not ask for help, leapt because she once could — the bottle wobbled and began to fall. On earth, objects plummet at a pace of 9.8 meters per second squared, which means this bottle will reach the ground approximately two-thirds of a second after it begins its journey. But as any oenophile knows, wine makes a moment last — in this case, long enough to share exactly 15 things about this…...
In slanting early morning light, a shadow crosses a vineyard. The figure moves row by row, ripping out vines and casting them onto a large, burning pyre. The blaze stretches to greet the sun as it rises above a mountainous horizon. There is fire from all points of the compass. Death is in the air. The culprit is a phytoplasm fatal to Vinifera vines. Its spread is aided by the American grapevine leafhopper (Scaphoideus titanus), a dwarf cicada native to North America. As it feasts on the vines, it transmits the pathogen of what is known in German as Goldgelbe…...
