Wine Returns to Weinheim

A handful of Weinheim visionaries are reshaping the future of German wine in the country’s largest winegrowing region with lessons from the past.
A handful of Weinheim visionaries are reshaping the future of German wine in the country’s largest winegrowing region with lessons from the past.
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.
We British are not the world’s most noted linguists, but that doesn’t seem to put off some of us from drinking “German-speaking” wines. That said, the market for these wines has had a rough ride at times, which makes their current increasing popularity all the more intriguing. Germany has historically boasted a well-established presence in the U.K. wine market. In the 19th– and early 20th– centuries German wines were famously on par with Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and Port in terms of price. After the fall of Napoleon, the Rhineland and the Mosel both entered a period of prosperity, initiated by…...
It’s hard to believe now, but Germany was once a divided country, and the East was a strange microcosm of icons of that era: Sandmännchen, Jungpioniere, and FKK-Kultur. Not to forget its sparkling ambassador, Rotkäppchensekt. Also hard to believe: a destination for wine fans has now arisen in the area between Chemnitz and Cottbus, Magdeburg and Dresden. And yet, from Berlin, the trip takes you almost 200 kilometers to the south, past Dessau and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, to a place whose name sounds to German ears disturbingly close to “Lauch” (leek). Laucha an der Unstrut has roughly 3,200 inhabitants, a bell museum, and one…...
”In the past, nature held very little meaning for me,” Kremstal winegrower Markus Lang admits when asked to remember the first impressions of his vineyards. Fifteen years ago, he came to the parcels on Austria’s Steiner Schreck as the Virgin Mary to her child: naive and fully unprepared. He inherited the vineyard from his great uncle, whose winemaking reputation preceded him… for wines to be avoided at all costs. “But opening the gate to the vineyard for the first time, I was struck by a feeling that I belonged there,” he recalls. “So I got to work. And it was a…...
Northern Germany's answer to lobster, and a true hybrid Riesling surprise.
There is no fish soup in the Pfalz. Sad, but true. Like most of Germany’s winegrowing regions, the Pfalz is simply too far removed from the sea for fish to feature prominently in its traditional cuisine. By extension, Pfalz fish soup is practically a culinary contradiction. A delicious deception. A seafood swindle. A Pfalz cookbook is a celebration of rustic comfort: Leberknödel (liver dumplings), Kartoffelsuppe mit Speck (potato soup with bacon, often in unlikely combination with plum cake), and, of course, Saumagen (stuffed pig’s stomach). Arguably the region’s culinary signature dish, this is a hearty, sausage-y mix of pork, potato,…...
If there is an underdog in Germany’s largest winegrowing region, Rheinhessen, it is Scheurebe. Vinified sweet for many years, Scheurebe — pronounced SHOY-ray-beh — largely fell out of fashion. But things changed, and with the dry wine revolution in Germany over the last 20 years, Scheu is back, with — to quote Patti LaBelle — brand new ideas and a new attitude. “Scheu,” as aficionados like to call it, was bred by German viticulturist Justus Georg Scheu in 1916. Unhappy with the many highly acidic and sour Rieslings he encountered, Scheu (the man, not the grape) wanted to create a…...
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