Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

This is another post for which no opening image image could possibly be adequate, not least because we’ve seen just about every image from New York on this day in 2001 so many times before. And those which are still private should surely remain that way, because for someone they have a personal meaning.

Perhaps, as some New Yorkers have suggested to me the commemoration of 9/11 has become a big over-done, even theatrical and melodramatic. However, for me it wasn’t any of those things. As I ran early yesterday morning in the Hudson River Park from which there’s a fine view of the Statue of Liberty and the Freedom Tower at what the whole world now calls Ground Zero. I noticed a helicopter hovering near the top of the tower and due to the distance it first looked like an insect, but then I saw a flag at half-mast and realized that it was actually a guardian angel. I use those words, because if some lunatic(s) had tried a rerun of 9/11, then that helicopter certainly wouldn’t have been able to stop them.

Then there was a rerun of that day in my mind. I was at the Georg Breuer winery in Rüdesheim in the Rheingau/Germany for an event which the since deceased Bernhard Breuer had organized. Miraculously everybody turned up and down in his vaulted cellar cut off from the news networks we had a bizarrely good evening. The next morning the full enormity of the events struck me as I watched the scenes of dust, paper and other debris being swept along downtown streets by the wind. The scale of the loss of life had become apparent, also the intent of the terrorists to attack not only New York and Washington DC, but also to wound the American economy and break the spirit of freedom, justice and equality which is at the heart of the American Dream. How successfully they had achieved the former was already crystal clear; how successful they were in the latter goals became apparent in the economic indicators of the subsequent months, and is also a story that is still unfolding (NSA, etc). The launch of my latest book on 9/12/01 at a hotel only a couple of miles from Frankfurt Airport was, of course, a complete flop. Everybody thought the sky might fall on their heads!

At first I found the events in New York incredibly shocking, but as the days passed they slowly seemed more and more remote as those images of the planes hitting the towers were repeated endlessly on the news networks. Then, I had to take an express train across Germany from Berlin to Cologne for a book reading. As usual I purchased a newspaper at the Berlin terminus before boarding the train, but on that day I couldn’t get an International Herald Tribune (the international edition of the New York Times) and had to take a (British) Guardian instead. I started reading it at the beginning and worked my way through. It was a couple of hours later that I found a list of the known 9/11 victims on the back page. At this early stage it was basically a list of the people on the four flights that were hijacked. It was alphabetical I immediately noticed the first name on the list: Christian Adams.

Christian Adams worked for the Deutsches Weininsitut (DWI) in Mainz which promotes German wine around the world to this day, here in through USA as Wines of Germany through the PR company R.F. Binder in New York. America was Christian’s patch, which is how he came to be one of the 33 passengers on United Airlines flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania on that day. He was the first person to take an approach to promoting German wine like that of the young people who dominate the present day staff of DWI and Wines of Germany in New York. They all have a lot in common with present day German Jungwinzer. Their’s is an inclusive and open approach, but without ever abandoning a clear awareness of where quality, style and originality are to be found, and where these things are lacking. The insinuation that they have some kind of totalitarian ideology about wine (or anything else) is a gross misrepresentation of their nature. Christian Adams was a forerunner of all this, and I feel privileged to have known him.

Just seconds after I read his name on the back page of the Guardian that day there was a terrible knocking and bumping sound from under the train, their were shrieks and white faces on which was written the thought, “German 9/11! Was this part of a simultaneous series of attacks on express trains here, and possibly in other countries? The train shuddered to a halt and there was a long icy silence broken only by a few nervous whispers. Then after a few minutes an announcement came on the PA. Someone had thrown themselves under the train, had committed suicide and the local police were already investigating. It would mean a delay of a couple of hours. We were not the target of something. We were the lucky ones and we still are.

Pictured above is new new desk on West 16th Street, the place where I’m feverishly working like crazy on the manuscript of my new book BWWOE. Probably more of the book will be written here than anywhere else, although my time at the Hotel of Hope on East 7th Street was equally vital. There the ideas that I’m now turning into a portrait of the Planet Riesling first took coherent shape.

Of course, as  you can see from the empty bottles on my desk I haven’t stopped either tasting or drinking wine and the mix of the sampled and consumed remains as eclectic as it always was. Yesterday evening Volker Donabaum of A.I. Selections called around to deliver a sample for a tasting here in a couple of days time. Suddenly he popped open his rucksack and there was a half empty bottle of the 2012 Wiltinger Braunfels Riesling from Van Volxem in Wiltingen/Saar. It was so delicious and so fascinating that we completed the emptying of the bottle. I really think that the 2012s are the best wines which Roman Niewodniczanski has yet made at Van Volxem, not because they are the most concentrated (the 2011s were slightly bigger wines), but because their balance is nearly perfect. What I mean isn’t only the balance between acidity, alcohol (a modest 12% in all the wines) and rather less residual sweetness than in previous years, but also between the fresh and ripe components of the wines, of their minerality and textural richness.

The balance of the wine was also what impressed me about the 2011 Malbec from Ramot Naftaly in the Kedesh Valley/Israel. I’m not a Malbec fan, finding the wines often too big and heavy their spice less than subtle. However, this wine which weighs in at 13.7% (compare with the 14.5 – 15% typical of Argentine Malbecs) has a lovely freshness (compare with the inkiness of many French Cahors) which lifts the finish and the dark berry fruit and spice aromas are well matched. So, I found myself emptying another bottle with real enthusiasm, although it contained wine from a grape variety I don’t normally like.

Of course, the rather dry (but to my mind not at all too dry) Van Volxem Riesling reminded me of Terry Theise’s reactions to my criticism of some sweeping statements he’d made about dry German Riesling, one of which was reprinted in the New York Times of August 22nd. In the cause of fairness I gave him an entire posting to state his case in detail (just scroll down to find all this stuff). I’ve read and reread what I wrote and although my postings are certainly direct, I don’t think my language is at any point rude, much less insulting. I merely point out what seem to me to be the logical implications of those statements, and what they seem to willfully ignore. However, Terry Theise seems to insist that it was all a personal attack upon him on the basis that, “I am the person behind the ideas and words.” However, the logical conclusion of that is that nobody should be allowed to question or criticize any of his statements, because that would a personal attack upon him. If that’s the case then he’s placing himself beyond criticism, like a statue on a high pedestal that you can’t look in the eye. Maybe he feels that the same should apply to everyone, which at first glance seems very fair. However, that would be even worse, because then blatantly anti-semitic, racist and other outrageous statements would all have to stand. In a democracy with a free press I can’t believe that’s the right way of doing things.

So, let me make it very plain. If you ever think I’ve said something untrue or unacceptable in any way, then please send me a comment and I will always put it online. The only “comments” I ever block are those which are actually sales pitches.  This desk may be full of the BWWOE work in progress, but there is always room for your comments. If they are interesting or important enough I will give them extra space, just as I did to Terry Theise’s. If you have something new to say that strikes me as being as interesting as anything I have to say, then space is also available. That strikes me as being in the spirit of openness characteristic of the Global Riesling Network. Thank you all!

I only seem to have been running since the first official presentation of the 2012 Riesling “Grosse Gewächse” (GG) just over a week ago in Wiesbaden. Of course, I’ve had it easy compared with some of my colleagues, because I haven’t forced myself to tweet some theoretically important opinion very 15 minutes in order to justify my own existence (or is that all about proving that you’re not dead yet?) On the other hand, I have to admit that the whole Terry Theise situation distracted me seriously at times from the real business of these days. So back to the Riesling trail…

These days all manner of wines are presented for the first time at this point in the year and after wading through a mass of GGs in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie for more than four hours (more on the GGs when I’ve had time to sort my impressions of several hundred wines) I was glad to head off to The Grand on the Hirtenstrasse/Berlin-Mitte an find some Riesling Shelter where Katharina Wechsler of the eponymous winery in Westhofen/Rhienhessen and Kai Schätzel of the Schätzel estate in Nierstein/Rheinhessen (pictured above) presented their “Pettenspiel” joint-venture Riesling in a self-consciously eccentric and thoroughly ironic manner.

In case you doubt me on the irony this wine is only available in magnums and the label (sorry that I forgot to photograph it) is a rectangle of white paper with the name of the wine printed on it as if written with an old-fashioned manual typewriter. Maybe some young people only think this is a cool typeface, because they never even saw such an old-fashioned thing as a manual typewriter, but I remember using such a machine when I was young. As I expected coming from this pair – a pair of winemaking friends and no more – the wine is light years removed from the norms of our Wine Age in which things are either as boring as hell or deliberately as crazy as humanly possible (because this still seems to be cool). It’s serious stuff with a lot of depth, but without that much weight, and a subtle spiciness that kept drawing me back to the glass. This is as it should be given a price of 49 Euro per magnum. As the name suggests the wine is 50% Riesling from Kai Schätzel’s vineyard in the Pettenthal site of Nierstein and 50% Riesling from Katharina Wechsler’s holding in the Kirchspiel site of Westhofen. These are two winemakers with as much daring as talent and both are just beginning to spread their wings. By the way, they are both making almost exclusively making that “invasive species”, dry wines.

PS Don’t worry, there really will be some serious thoughts on the GGs when I’ve managed to process the enormous mass of sensory data! Of course, they’re also all dry wines…what the hell are we getting into here?

The last couple of days I was tasting, tasting, tasting like all the other journalists, experts, somms and geeks gathered on the Rhine to attend the various presentations the high-end dry wines of the 2012, a large portion of which go on sale in just four days (September 1st). The day before yesterday I bumped into Chris Miller of Spago Beverly Hills (see my coverage of the Riesling Road Trip below) came all the way from LA to attend the VDP producers associations “premiere” of the 2012 ‘Grosse Gewächse” (GGs) in Wiesbaden and he clearly felt that this effort was worthwhile. So did everyone who had a shorter drive, plane or train ride. But while we were all tasting, tasting, tasting and I, like everyone else, was trying to figure out which were the best wines and what the overall standard was (more on that in a moment) a storm burst over me as a result of the two posts below. Much of the thunder and lightning took the form of emails, some of which I was asked not to publicize, but there’s no way I can just let this whole thing go. Extreme as this might seem what is at stake is not only the international perception of German wines, but also the Germans themselves.

It all reminds me of a situation at a tasting of German wines in London where an older colleague of mine suddenly and loudly exclaimed, “Oh my God, they’ve all been trockenized!”  Everybody heard it and turned around to see what had happened. What she meant was that all the German wines she loved, which in her mind had been sweet at least since time of Noah (because that’s the way she remembered them) had suddenly been turned “trocken”, the German word for dry. Some of the wines were indeed a bit lean and sour, so some criticism was called for. However, for her there was no doubt that certain people – the German winegrowers standing on the other side of the table – had committed an odious crime and should be held responsible for it. Call the United Nations right now!

That was almost exactly 25 years ago and since then a lot has changed. However, Terry Theise, one of the leading importers of German wines to America was quoted in the New York Times of August 22nd 2013 as saying, “the omnipresence of dry wines within Germany is a dubious example of this country’s temptation to do things in large, implacable blocks.” That makes it sound as though German wines – particularly those which the Germans drink – are stuck in some terrible dry rut that was a mistake from the beginning, but has only become deeper the further they drove into it. This implies stupidity, blindness or a combination of both. Worse still, Terry Theise suggests that this is part of some fatal flaw in the German’s national character, of which this is merely the latest in a long series of examples. Only the most superficial knowledge of modern history is necessary to spot one such large, implacable block in German history, even though it was only 12 years long.

During all the email correspondence a bunch of other stuff came up which suggested this view of German wines and the Germans isn’t limited to Terry Theise, which makes it all the more important to offer an alternative view. Yesterday I visited a handful of specialists for dry Riesling in this part of the Rhine Valley: Carl Erhard and Gunther Künstler (pictured above) of the Franz Künstler winery in Hochhein/Rheingau, Jochen Dreissiacker (pictured below) of the Dreissigacker winery in Bechtheim, Klaus Peter Keller of the Keller winery in Flörsheim-Dalsheim and Philipp Wittmann of the Wittmann winery in Westhofen. Although Künstler is longer-established (he first made a splash 25 years ago), all are extremely ambitious and dynamic producers and the wines I tasted ranged from very good to mind-blowing. More importantly, each of these producers has his own distinctive style and the wines of each vineyard site had their own personalities. In short it was an exhausting, but inspiring day of tasting which gave me a wealth of material for columns and stories. However, I mention all of this only because it all stands in stark contrast to the tone of Theise & Co.

The problem for me with their attitude is that they talk and write as if “dry” German wines were some kind of large, implacable block, have always been that way and will ever remain so. I feel no hint of appreciation for the diversity of this micro-cosmos of wine that has been developing longer than I’ve been following it (about 30 years), becoming ever richer in color and tone as it did so. Such has been the improvement in quality that the best dry German wines now unquestionably amongst the world’s finest. However,  Theise & Co. insist on presenting “dry” as a stark alternative to “sweet”, even if they are at pains to make clear that their championing of the “sweet” underdog (as they see it) doesn’t mean that they believe the sweeter the wines are the better. That is really the only hint of nuance I get in their argument. I have the strong impression that they aren’t really interested in the achievements of winegrowers like those I visited yesterday, or at best grudgingly so. Instead, they project a dull and monolithic quality on this richness. For them the Rhine seems to be a place that inspires fear and loathing.

That is all in stark contrast to the attitude behind my work, which is all about embracing the enormous diversity of Riesling, German wine and wine in general. As I made clear in my posting on August 23rd the Germany I experience to day is far more open-minded and far less inclined to behave in large, implacable blocks than it was ten or twenty years ago. I enjoy the company of the “Flexi-Germans”, as Roger Cohen of the New York Times christened young Germany back in 2006 during the soccer World Cup, and it is a pleasure for me to drink the wines made by some of them. Many of them are dry, and wonderfully so. There are of course better and least good examples, just as there are everywhere that wine is made. That’s the reality I encounter here.

Jochen Dreissigacker had some important thoughts on this subject, which got lost in my hurry to post this story very early in the morning while on the road. When he asked him how he saw the situation he said, “they slammed the door that was open in from of them, then put a lock on it!” His tone and the past tense made it plain that he thought this had happened many years ago and that Theise & Co. have no intention of unlocking and reopening it. Personally, I’m all in favor of unlocking all the doors of perception  (to quote Aldous Huxley), regardless whether they were closed by someone else or I stupidly closed them myself). And about his own generation, the “Flexi-Germans”, also known as Generation Riesling, he said, “for us there’s only one question: does the wine tastes good or not!”

The last years there was a lot of discussion in the German media about the failure of multicultural society in Germany, and if you only looked at certain sections of the large immigrant communities from Turkey and ex-Yugoslavia, then there was clearly something in that. However, the truth is that Germany has become much more broadly multicultural than either the media or politicians acknowledge. I got thinking about this yesterday evening when I had dinner at Restaurant Miyagi directly opposite the railway station in the small Rheingau town of Walluf Tel.: (49) / 0 6123 / 934 94 59.

If a couple of years ago you would have told me that shortly one of the best Japanese restaurants in Germany would open at this location I would have told you that you are absolutely crazy. However, since October 2011 the Miyagi family has been running their restaurant in Walluf with considerable success attracting a surprisingly mixed crowd. As Akira Myagi (right in the picture) told me, “some nights we have all Japanese customers, some nights all European, some mixed, sometimes only local people, sometimes from the Frankfurt area.” What makes this place so remarkable? For a start, the excellent food. Last night the deep fried fish of various kinds (best of all were the sardines), the sashimi, and the octopus salad were all super-fresh, delicious and beautifully presented. To this must be added the joyfully eccentric effect created by putting a traditional Japanese restaurant into what used to be a traditional German Weinstube, which the picture below gives an idea of. That’s what I call successfully multicultural!

Immediately after dinner (it was planned beforehand but delayed by rain) Hajo Becker from Weingut J.B. Becker in Walluf took me for a tour of his vineyards. He’s lucky to have 13.5 acres / 5.5 hectares in one black in the best part of the Wallufer Walkenberg site. Much of this is old vines, including the Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) vines pictured below that were planted in 1959. Becker also has some Riesling vines in the Walkenberg that are even older, and many that are thirty and forty years old. The Becker method for Riesling and for Spätburgunder is to have the fruiting zone lower than is the norm today and to explore it on the morning sunlight side for the final phase of ripening. Above it is a tall vertical canopy, to give the vine the largest possible “solar panel”. Together with the low crop level – my guess is a mere 20 – 30 hectoliters per hectare (under two tons per acre) – this results in an optimum situation for ripening. By the way, he’s also an organic winegrower.

Some in the German wine scene dismiss the J.B. Becker wines as old-fashioned, although the only evidence they can provide for this is the combination of vilification in neutral wooden casks and late bottling (the 2012s Rieslings are all are still in barrel!) However, that’s the way a lot of Jungwinzer, or young German winegrowers make at least their hi-end single vineyard Rierslings. Much more interesting than this discussion is the way the J.B. Becker wines have become a cult in recent years, particularly with young consumers who like the style of the dry wines (discretely aromatic, racy and complex, developing very slowly over many years in the bottle). Restaurant Miyagi in Walluf has some other wines available and they continue to search for interesting wines, but Akira told me that it is the J.B. Becker wines which go best with their Japanese cuisine.

Today I was going to give you a glimpse of the stories I’ll be posting here after I deliver the manuscript for my new Riesling book ‘BWWOE’ to my publisher, Abrams in New York City November 1st, but I just read Eric Asimov’s report on dry German Riesling in the New York Times of August 22^nd. There’s nothing about Eric Asimov’s story -‘Germany’s Rieslings on the Tip of the Tongue’ – which I wish to argue with, and the results of the panel’s blind tasting reflect how the wines showed that day and in that situation; of course!

My problem is with a quote from Terry Theise, since decades one of the leading importers of German wines in America, and I must thank Asimov for putting it in there so it can be discussed. What Terry Theise said or wrote was, “the omnipresence of dry wines within Germany is a dubious example of this country’s temptation to do things in large, implacable blocks”. That’s not just a sweeping statement, but also has an accusing tone. It suggests that the Germans have (with few exceptions) collectively changed direction like a herd that recently charged in the wrong direction. That this isn’t really the case is revealed by a quick glance at the statistics for Germany wine production and consumption, but I fear that in spite of that Terry Theise is totally convinced he’s right.

Sure, if you spend some time in Germany’s winegrowing regions, or even big cosmopolitan cities like Cologne and Berlin, and you judge the wine market solely on the wine lists of restaurants there you could get that impression. However, that way you only get to see one side of the German wine market. Also, isn’t it only logical that in regions like Rhienhessen, the Pfalz and Baden where the climate (accentuated by climate change) and other factors (holy terroir!) create better conditions for dry wine production than sweet winemakers concentrate on the dry style? Of course, there are other regions where the production of sweet wines is much larger, because conditions are ideal for it. Maybe Terry Theise realizes all that (although it doesn’t sound like it from that quote), but he clearly hasn’t experienced the open-mindedness of young Germans for wines of all styles. Their, “if it tastes good I’ll drink it!” pragmatism reminds me of many young American consumers.

That is disappointing, but what really upsets me is something Terry Theise left unsaid, but which his words strongly imply. The most obvious large, implacable block in modern German history is the slightly more than 12 years of Nazi dictatorship and all the heinous crimes committed under it, of which the Holocaust is the largest. As a long-term resident of Germany I’ve closely followed the (usually) very serious attempts by the Germans to come to terms with their past. The all-encompasing sense of moral obligation behind this, has sometimes made them tend towards black and white thinking about all manner of things.  However, I use the past tense, because what has changed in Germany more dramatically than anything else since I started observing the country from close up in my mid-teens (1975 -76) is the recent waning of that tendency.

It wasn’t without good reason that during his coverage of Germany during the FIFA soccer World Cup staged in Germany in the summer of 2006 that New York Times columnist Roger Cohen christened the nation’s young people “Flexi-Germans”. I’m not a soccer fan, but I was swept along by it all too. It was clearly a turning point for Germany, and not only because journalists like Cohen saw Germany for how it was without projecting the past onto it. It was also the moment the majority of Germans realized how fundamentally their country had changed.  People from all over the world filled the Germany’s major cities and a celebratory mood that was free from any hint of strident nationalism, much less violence, was omnipresent. Flags were everywhere, German flags, Brazilian flags (!), French flags, and dozens of others. It was utterly different from those pictures of the Berlin Olympics of 1936 when the city was swathed in swastika flags.

It took me a while to realize what this all meant for those Germans of my generation (I’m 53) who’d had a sense of shame for the nation’s Nazi past inculcated in them during their youth. For them the 2006 soccer World Cup clearly brought not only high spirits, but also a feeling of relief. I could see it in their faces. This was the time when the realization spread among them that they need feel no guilt for what was done during those 12 years long before they were born. That too has changed Germany. Most Germans of my generation no longer feel the same obligation to do the “right thing” in order to demonstrate their moral correctness that they used to. Yes, even wine was long a vehicle for that purpose!

Today Germans of all generations feel more confident about saying that they prefer sweet wines to dry ones, or the other way around, than they did a decade ago. All of this is surely positive. All of it is so far removed from what Terry Theise describes. Sorry, Terry, but you missed something important!

PS Here is Terry Theise’s reply. If he’s right, then I’m far too optimistic and Germany is headed in the wrong direction big time. I hope that he’s not as right as he thinks he is:

Stuart describes the world he sees, and I describe the world I see. I would be a much happier man if his description were truer than mine. But among my growers and the stories they tell me (and what I myself observe) the picture is radically at odds with that which Stuart paints. I sincerely hope to be proven wrong.

Re. “implacable blocs” please don’t read-in. My unsaid words did not “strongly imply” anything, but only spoke to a peculiar adherence to one particular wine style, as though everyone had the same taste in cars, or shirts, or lawn ornaments – which of course they don’t. But – as I observe it – they all seem to have identical tastes in wine: It must be Trocken. If the bloc is in fact less implacable than my observations suggest, i.e, if Stuart’s sample is wider or more current than mine, I look very much forward to observing that evidence myself. I’m not invested in being irked.

Stuart has a copy of my current catalogue, in which there’s a short essay on this subject, and it is recommended to anyone who wishes to read my thoughts on this question, with greater detail and nuance than can be conveyed in a brief quote to a wine journalist.

Here is the link to that essay about the “invasive species” – dry wines in Germany – in Terry Theises German catalogue (see page 8):

http://www.skurnikwines.com/msw/theise_catalogs.html

After my dinner last night at the Chinese restaurant Hot Spot in Berlin-Wilmersdorf with Martin Tesch of the Tesch winery in Langenlonsheim/Nahe I can tell you that the world according to Tesch is seriously interesting. Martin’s started by telling me about his event the previous evening at the Weinstein wine bar in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg where he’d shown a vertical of his dry Riesling from the Krone vineyard site going from the just released 2012 vintage back to the 2002. “It was a Clash of Civilizations!!!” he said, explaining that for part of the audience this all made perfect sense, but another part almost a dozen vintages of the same wine was just too much. You see the Tesch dry Rieslings (which is almost the only kind of wine he produces) appeal to many different groups of consumers, and the wine freaks/nerds are not the most important to him.

“Wine is a beverage,” is the first base of his philosophy which follows that through to the observation that it must be marketed in competition to other beverages. The unique taste of his wines is also their USP and communicating that is a vital part of his work. However, there’s no doubt that – even if he wanted to do it differently – his attitude is part of what he’s communicating with the taste of the wine. To call this personality marketing is to miss the point that his personality would be mere froth, were it not wedded to his ideas and the manner in which puts them over. Luckily for him his let’s-call-things-by-their-actual-names approach to everything perfectly fits the bone-dry straight-down-the-line style of his wines.

Why have many of you you never heard of him before? Well, the Tesch style of dry Riesling and everything which comes with it are not to the taste of all markets. Some people are immediately turned off or irritated by these wines usually because they don’t line up with their expectations of German Riesling – as if the wines from over 50,000 acres of vineyards could all neatly fit in one pigeonhole! Where this reaction is more common than people who are immediately turned on by the wines Tesch necessarily becomes underground, although this is not a role he ever actively seeks.

Here in crazy Berlin – I say crazy, because the wine market here is a bit crazy – the Tesch wines rather easily find an eager audience, though this isn’t quite big or coherent enough to call them mainstream (in contrast I’d say that Jungwinzer Markus Schneider of Ellerstadt/Pfalz has become mainstream, along with established stars like Robert Weil of Kiedrich/Rheingau). Here people like the way the Tesch wines taste and the boldness with which they present themselves to the world. It fits Berlin, where people on downtown street do very much the same thing.

The interesting thing about the Tesch range is that numerically it is dominated by his five single-vineyard dry Rieslings, which are color coded with daring non-wine colors that etch themselves into your nervous system. Sap green stands for Löhrer Berg (empty hill), lemon yellow for Krone (crown), turquoise blue for Königsschild (king’s shield), brick red for Karthäuser (Carthusians) and orange for St. Remigiusberg (St. Remi’s hill). These wines share the cleanness and clarity of his basic Riesling, ‘Unplugged’, but each has its own distinctive notes that recur vintage after vintage, yes, its own personality.

Fundamentally, that is the same idea as for the single vineyard ‘Grosses Gewächse’ (GG) wines which the VDP, Germany’s association of top producers, has been promoting for a good decade. The rules for the GGs changed recently (again) and the VDP has been explaining the new rules with the same enthusiasm that they explained the old rules. It often seems to me that the wines taste like only gets a mention if there is enough time left after the rules have been explained. And the conclusion I have to draw from this is that Germans like making up rules and explaining them, perhaps because it shows them to be upright citizens. There’s also frequently an “anything the French can do we can co too” aspect to this, particularly when the GG wines are referred to as “Grand Cru”. The problem is that it doesn’t help anyone understand the way the wines taste, and because wine is a beverage that’s what it’s all about! That, by the way, is entirely my opinion.

Martin and I discussed the whole GG thing at some length. He makes no bones about the fact that his single-vineyard wines wouldn’t qualify – even if he were interested to market them as GG’s, which he isn’t – because his yields are too high (around 70 hectoliters per hectare in 2012). That is deliberate, and helps prevent the alcoholic content shooting over 13% with the result that the wines start tasting thick and chewy, or even massive.  Tesch’s goal is to avoid these things at all cost, “because then the wines all start to taste the same”. His 2012 single-vineyard wines are anything but homogenous, are at once ripe and refreshing. They are perhaps his best wines to date and a totally convincing expression of the five vineyard sites he’s bottled separately in this way since 2002, which also means that they realize the theoretical goal of the GGs (even if they don’t follow all the rules).

Of course, there is another Clash of Civilizations between Martin and certain members of the VDP who would like to remove what they consider a stain from their organization by throwing him out of the association. However, this Reinigung, or dry cleaning,  doesn’t seem to function properly, and Tesch stubbornly remains a member. He and his wines keep on  pointing out uncomfortable truths and making a big noise, at least in some markets.

PS please don’t imagine that because this posting went up just 15 hours after the last one that I can do this all the time. The rest of today, and most or all of every day this week has to be devoted to my book manuscript.

Damn! I just realized that it’s an entire week since I put up a new post, which certainly wasn’t my plan, but when you’re book writing at 2,000 miles an hour as I have been almost every day for the last weeks (and must continue to do until November 1st), then you lose track of all kinds of stuff. Today, I got up early and took the train to the young Pinotin vines my team and I planted on May 3rd at the Klosterhof Töplitz wine estate in Töplitz, just SW of Berlin. Although the growth of the young vines was not enough in 7 days to allow for an impressive before and after photo comparison something had happened since my last visit. However, as the photograph above of shows the red Regent grapes had began coloring up. Andreas looks pleased about that, as he should be, because it’s his good work caring for those vines, no less than the fine weather (and enough rain), that have enabled the grapes to reach this decisive point in such good time. With the change of color comes a softening of the grapes and their ripening begins in earnest. My guess is that it will be about 6 weeks to the harvest for rosé and another 2 weeks for the red wine  In two years time this (see the detailed view below), I hope, is roughly how “my” young vines will look. Don’t worry, although the focus of this blog will remain Riesling I shall keep you informed when we – the grapes, the Klosterhof Töplitz team and I – get that far. By that time I hope to have learnt how to make red wine…

And in case you’re worried that it could be another entire week until the next posting here, let me inform you that tonight I’m having dinner at Hot Spot with Martin Tesch of the Tesch estate in Langenlonsheim/Nahe. Martin’s not only a remarkable winemaker, but also a rock ‘n’ roll poet of considerable talent. I have a file which is full of the scraps of paper on which I’ve scribbled down his best sayings – I never seemed to have my notebook ready when he rang, a mistake I won’t make this evening! My favorite is, “sometimes you can go through the door, but sometimes you have to go through the wall.” I expect that Martin, or at the very least Mr. Wu of Hot Spot, will come up with something similar. I will report in full tomorrow!

PS That tells you that the book writing has been going well, indeed those creative juices have been flowing very freely the last days.

This photograph taken early this morning a short train ride/drive outside Berlin in a southwesterly direction in the state of Brandenburg shows why I’m in such high spirits today. It shows one of the almost one thousand Pinotin vines I planted on May 3rd with the help of a motley crew of winegrower friends (thank you team, once again!) and as you can see it grew really the last three months and one week. In this parcel (rows 48 thru 57 on the eastern side of the hillside) almost all the vines look this, and in the other parcel we planted (rows 3 thru 6 plus rows 8 & 9 on the western side) most of the vines look rather similar. There only the vines in the two shortest rows with the poorest, driest soil of the entire south-facing hill look a bit weak and stressed. This rather surprising progress during my long absence in the USA means that there are at least 850, and perhaps as many as 900 Pinotin, vines on the Töplitzer Berg (where wine growing was first recorded back in 1360!) that are health enough – with a bit of luck – to give a small crop in 2015. My guess is that we’ll then get enough wine to fill a barrique and fill the first 300 bottles during the winter of 2016/17!

That would mean that the plan which caused so many experienced people in the German wine industry to raise eyebrows, laugh or call me a fool was not so stupid after all. I say this not because I want to prove anything, or to pat myself on the back, but because I hope the success of this experiment will encourage others to take a similar path, hopefully with greater success. Anyone doubting that the Pinotin vine, developed by the Swiss vine breeder Valentin Blattner together with the Freytag vine nursery in the Pfalz/Germany, could successfully carry a crop grapes in the Greater Berlin Area should study the photograph below. I took it this morning in Töplitz too!

Of course, Pinotin has nothing to do with Riesling, is a red wine grape, but I feel that it makes more sense here and remain highly skeptical about Riesling in the Greater Berlin Area. So far I had just one good example from this new frontier of German winegrowing that was convincing, and it was (a 2006) from a very small plot in the Prenzlauer Berg district of the city tended by hobbyists. As the Germans rightly say, one rose doesn’t make a summer. This year the summer in the Greater Berlin Area was much better than last year, but in spite of the mediocre growing conditions the dry 2012 Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris) from the Klosterhof Töplitz estate (where my Pinotin project resides) is a very attractive wine with a ripe melon aroma, 12.5% natural alcohol and about 0.8% natural sweetness (in retrospect less would have been better). I have to admit I was skeptical about Pinot Gris in the Greater Berlin Area until I tasted that wine, so who knows. Maybe you just need to grow Riesling the right way here around 52° 30′ (look how far up the map of Canada that is!). The next years will tell. Stay tuned to this station where the results of many winegrowing experiments in Berlin and environs will be publicized.