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.
Trink Magazine | Are PIWIs or grape hybrids our viticultural future as the climate crisis makes winegrowing more, not less, challenging? By Christoph Raffelt
It is a landscape rife with charms and challenges: From their perch atop the Oberrotweiler Eichberg, on a long-dormant volcano that rises to 310 meters, Johannes Landerer and Jakob Moise can enjoy some of the finest views over the Kaiserstuhl and sprawling Rhine Basin in Baden. The early morning sun is quickly rising, but the Kaiserstuhl, normally a place of striking warmth, has seen an unusual amount of precipitation in the summer of 2024, leaving it greener than at any time in recent memory. But if this pair of Kaiserstuhl winegrowers agree on anything, it’s that this situation is likely…...
Kitzingen has never been particularly famed as a mecca for winemaking in Franken. So when I received an invitation to visit this town, 20 km southeast of Würzburg, for a wine presentation by the New Kitz & Friends, I had little reason to suspect it would mutate into a natural wine hub. At this point, New Kitz & Friends are hardly unknowns – certainly not in this magazine. Colleague Rainer Schäfer recently profiled this group of unconventional locals and newcomers, all moving in a cosmic orbit around the pioneering natural wine estate 2Naturkinder. For this event, the New Kitz called…...
At a time when some Mosel producers are shedding vineyards like snakeskins, Ernst “Erni” Loosen, who already has 90 hectares at his disposal, is trying on a new one. A few years ago, a cousin of Loosen’s called to say he was selling a parcel. Lammertslay, a steep, mid-slope, two-and-a-half-hectare plot within the Wehlener Sonnenuhr, is hallowed ground for Riesling. The vines were largely wurzelecht (ungrafted), planted around 1895 in pure blue slate soil on a south-facing slope. Loosen was sold. The parcel had belonged to his great-grandfather, Dr. Zacharias Bergweiler-Prüm. Loosen saw it as a rare chance to honor…...
