Your German Wines Are Begging for Bauernbrot
Star-baker Martin Sorge wants you to up your bread game. Wine pairings including.
Star-baker Martin Sorge wants you to up your bread game. Wine pairings including.
Martin Sorge is a food writer, recipe developer, and home baker based in Chicago. Martin was named the winner of the most recent season of the Great American Baking Show. He also spent many years working in the wine industry in Chicago and Indiana. You can follow Martin on Instagram and subscribe to his newsletter, Great Bakes.
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.
Some say it lacks the historical cache of the Rheingau, the legendary vineyard names of the Mosel, or the easy charm of neighboring Rheinhessen. There are no convenient river boats to ferry you between wine villages, nor even particularly good train connections. No argument: the Nahe [NAHH-heh] Valley demands that you put in a bit of work to explore its more far-flung corners. The reward for those efforts is some of the most objectively fascinating landscapes, geology, climate, and wines anywhere in Germany. In fact, things can get downright adventurous in Germany’s version of the (Wine) Wild West. From the…...
March 25, 2024 Update: Eva Fricke and the German Wine Collection no longer together. Apparently, the tango takes even more complex footwork than either party anticipated. And the frisson of friction is real. In wine, the relationship between importer and producer works better when it’s more tango than transaction. First there is the careful footwork of their own internal negotiations, then a set of fancy steps together for the audience. The goal is to position the new producer within an aesthetic and cultural context that would-be consumers will find attractive. It is a delicate dance that requires surprising intimacy and…...
André Gussek remembers very clearly how it all got started: Right around the time he was hired as cellar master at the historic eastern German Kloster Pforta winery in 1982, “the first Spätburgunder vines, West German clones obtained via foreign trade,” arrived at the estate in Naumburg an der Saale, roughly 60 kilometers from Leipzig and some 220 kilometers from Berlin. “In the fog of history, it was difficult to see precisely where they came from,” Gussek explains with characteristic calm. Much clearer is what they became: a catalyst for red wine to assume “an ever-larger role” in the former…...
A fresh crop of Masters of Wine was announced late last month: Ten individuals who have grasped the holy grail of wine education. Among them is Moritz Nikolaus Lüke of Bonn — the tenth German to achieve the distinction. He joins an elite crew who have earned the title by passing legendarily rigorous blind tasting examinations and writing a series of theory papers as well as a research-based thesis. TRINK caught up with Lüke to find out what the experience was like, learn about his Covid-driven research paper — and get an answer to the question we’re all naturally most curious about: what he drank…...
Hans Ruck, 74, is fully at home in front of a stove. The German vintner, of Weingut Ruck in Iphofen, has been a serious chef for five decades, with a healthy stash of self-composed recipes — all harmonized to the wines from his estate at the edge of the Steigerwald in central Franken. “I’ve never had a beer with a meal in my life,” Ruck claims. “The harmony between food and wine is what truly brings the enjoyment.” Once Ruck gets rolling, it’s hard to stop him. You soon feel like you’re standing at the stove with him, peeking into…...
© 2026, TRINK Magazine. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from TRINK.
