Of course, you’re wondering what three young German winegrowers holding glasses of red wine are doing adorning episode two of my New York Riesling Diary. Well tonight at 6pm at Trestle on Tenth (Tenth Avenue and 24th Street) the American Association of Wine Economists and I are hosting a very special tasting of dry Rieslings from Germany’s largest wine growing region Rheinhessen. It’s young winemakers like Mirjam Schneider of the Schneider estate in Mainz, Christine Huff from the Fritz Ekkehard Huff estate in Nierstein-Schwabsburg and Eva Vollmer also of Mainz who have transformed Rheinhessen from the faded Golden October of Liebfraumilch to the Dream Factory of dry white wines in the space of a few years. Tonight’s tasting will feature a wine from Christine Huff in the blind tasting of 2011 dry Rieslings that is the heart of the event. Sadly though Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer also make some excellent dry Rieslings we couldn’t them and dozens of their Jungwinzer (young winegrower) colleagues purely for reasons of time and space. After the blind tasting of current releases will follow some amazing mature wines, but I don’t want to take the suspense away for those who’ve signed up for this exclusive by invitation only event.
At 10 a.m. I heaved a great sigh of relief after my suitcase arrived two days and six hours after I checked it in at the BA counter in Berlin. One item of clothing, part of my jogging kit, was gone and my dressing gown had a small tear, but I was really glad to finally have all my stuff and no longer feel like a refugee in borrowed clothing. Of course, nobody is the clothes they are wearing, or even the clothes they aren’t wearing, but though it may be only sentimentality putting on certain items of apparel changes the way I move and think. I didn’t want to be without that this evening.
Immediately after unpacking my stuff I went for a long run out along the East River. In the riverside park I saw the first evidence of Sandy’s impact upon the city: a huge pile of chopped up tree trunks. Later at the junction of Avenue C and 14th Street I searched in vain for signs of the electricity substation which exploded blacking out Southern Manhattan. It was great to get out and move through the city, to feel its energy lifting my step and a little tingle of electric anticipation of tonight’s tasting…
