For over a year, we’ve been living with a pandemic that has shut down more than just our senses of taste and smell. It has forced us to rely on at-home experiences like a glass of wine to satisfy our longing for travel. But what do the places of our terroir dreams taste like? What exactly constitutes the origins of a wine? To use a loaded German word, how much Heimat (loosely, homeland) is in terroir? Flash back to harvest 2012. Max von Kunow of Weingut von Hövel in Germany’s Saar visits the Jurtschitsch family in Austria’s Kamptal for a vacation before his own harvest. Together…
Kevin Puls works in advertising and PR. His passion for Austrian wine began nearly two decades ago and he's regularly tasted the vintages of the Alpenrepublik from the Wachau to Styria. His weakness for estates that work organically and for natural wines started with Gut Oggau's 2007 vintage. He's also a regular visitor to Franken. He blogs about food, wine, and the people who make them.
Just in time for the tropical temperatures of summer 2026, I made myself Som Tam Thai (ส้มตำ), a Thai papaya salad. At 30°C (86°F) or above, few of us have much of an appetite. But you have to eat something eventually. With no green papaya on hand, kohlrabi cut a surprisingly good figure. And the bold, intensely seasoned dressing did the rest. So, what to drink with it? They recommend you should consume an extra two liters of fluid at these temperatures, and who am I to argue? Off to the wine cellar to find a good bottle. Oddly, the…...
Picture yourself at a German holiday market (if such things were happening in 2020) — a mug of glühwein in hand and the scent of fresh pfeffernuss cookies in the air. It’s no surprise that these warm, spicy aromas are key attributes in many wines from Germany and Austria, South Tyrol, and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. And there’s a hidden world of compounds and precursors to thank for this distinctive and alluring range. Much like a chef in the kitchen, growers can influence the aromatic and flavor complexity of their wines by playing with soil type, exposition, vine age,…...
Roughly once a generation, the German government pops the hood on the country’s wine law for a tune up. 2021 is one such year, with a new set of revisions taking effect in early May. On the surface, the changes appear more incremental than revolutionary. Yet controversy has followed as various stakeholders realize that some new wrinkles may have unexpectedly far-reaching consequences. So let’s pour ourselves a glass of dry wine (law) and savor some juicy power dynamics. Here are the early winners and losers of the 2021 German Wine Act. Winner: The VDP’S Long Game You can’t say the…...
Germany seems to require an official examination for everything. Qualitätsweine (“quality wines”) are no exception. Those that fail the test are slapped with the Landwein label. In April 2015, a group of top growers from Baden, deep in Germany’s southwest, joined forces to rebel against the official inspection system. Flouting what officials would think of as a demotion, they decided to wear Landwein as a badge of honor. Baden has long been seen as the kinder, more conventional Germany. Thus Landwein is a direct challenge to that sensibility, one that takes on more significance because it seemed the unlikeliest of places for revolt. It happened the way so many…...
People imagined him to be an alchemist. Granted, it wasn’t gold his slender hands were currently molding, rather a gleaming tinted zinc capsule, encompassing perfect angles and gracing the long slender neck of a curvaceous body. While such language might seem passé in 2021, the characters who regularly participated in such frolics were not. Many were successful, most of them hailing from families older than the states whose passports they’d carry in their bespoke suits. Make no mistake: even here, the wealthier they were, the less attention to proper attire; and don’t let us get started on the unshaven angel…...
