It is Friday night and I’m terrified. In 24 hours, a top sommelier is coming to our house for dinner. A sommelier who puts together the wine lists for a global restaurant group; a sommelier who has spent over 30 years training more somms than I’ve seen typos on a wine list; a sommelier who matches food and wine the way the rest of us match our Sunday outfits. And tomorrow, I’m responsible for the wine. My wife draws up a shopping list for the meal, blissfully unconcerned. “We’re not a restaurant,” she says, “why should she expect Michelin-starred cooking?”…
Chris Losh has been writing about wine and spirits for over 20 years, yet still retains his own liver. He has written half a dozen books on wine - the latest one 'Where to Drink Wine' a travel book that was brilliantly timed to coincide with Covid closing airports all over the world. He has edited Wine & Spirit International, Wine Magazine and Imbibe - none of which exist any longer, but which he says isn't his fault. He is a co-founder of the Sommelier Collective - a tasting/educational site for the UK on-trade and editor of Fake Booze - the world's only satirical drink website.
Piri Naturel is Christine Pieroth's independent line of natural wines in Germany's Burg Layen. Her wines bring a breath of fresh air to more straightforward Nahe’s wine scene.
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…...
The future of the Mosel Apollo butterfly and its habitat of the Mosel terraces are endangered. Can a solution be found that allows both to continue to coexist?
Those who go on the hunt for modern Württemberg may be surprised by what they find on the journey. In this stretch of southern Germany, many things work differently. Swabians have their own take on cool. Here you’ll meet a grower from the hip-hop scene who has the region’s traditional wine mug inked as a tattoo. You’ll bump into a start-up winery launched with crowdfunding. And you’ll land at the door of one of Germany’s hippest growers, 68-year-old Helmut Dolde of Linsenhofen. DOLDE Dolde wears a walrus mustache and, on the day of my visit, a cap someone gave him that says “Wine in…...
