Category Archives: STUART PIGOTT RIESLING GLOBAL
New York Riesling Diary: Day 2 – Where the Next Story is to be Found (Welcome to the Corner of West 16th and 6th Ave)
I often ask myself where the next story is to be found, particularly when I’ve been in one place for a long time and familiarity has made me contemptuous of my surroundings, so that I have ceased to take them … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 8 – Very Long-Term Planning
Most of my work is horribly short-term stuff. I taste a wine/various wines in order to write about it/them here or in my column in the Sunday edition of the FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (German language) on the same day, or … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 6 – $196,000 for a Bottle of Smith-Madrone Riesling from California
Pictured above are Stuart (left) and Charles Smith (right) of the Smith-Madrone winery on Spring Mountain in Napa Valley, California. They’ve got good reason to look happy, because a bottle of their dry 1997 Riesling just sold at auction for … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 4 – Can You See the Real Me?
Can you see the real me? Can you? I first heard The Who’s Quadrophenia album in November 1976 just over three years after it was released, and that line from the song The Real Me instantly etched itself into my … Continue reading
On the Riesling Road: Day 3 – 2014 in Germany is Up in the Heavens & Down to Zero
The Mainzer Weinbörse, the annual major presentation of the new vintage by the German VDP producers association is just about to end after two grueling days. They weren’t grueling only because of the sheer number of wines on show (more … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 20 – Billy Wagner’s Restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig is Some-thing/where Else (Part 2)
The photograph above is a Portrait of the Gastronomic Artist as a Young Man, which is to say the previous incarnation of Billy Wagner just before he started seriously planing what became his new restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig (N&S) on … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 19 – Billy Wagner’s Restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig is Some-thing/where Else (Part 1)
I don’t normally do restaurant reviews, but occasionally my visits to restaurants were so exciting that I ended up writing some kind of “review”. This is such a case thanks to restaurateur Billy Wagner (left), dishwasher Samuel Teye-Osom (centre), chef Micha Schäfer … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 17 – The Vanishing Wine Journalist: Good, Bad or Flaky?
As you can see from the title of this posting it’s Day 17 for me in Berlin this time around, but sometimes it felt like Day minus 17. Several times I’ve walked into wine stores, wine bars or wine tastings … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 15 – Unsmiling Faces of Berlin
Achim von Oetinger is not a Berliner, at least not normally. After looking very carefully at this photograph of the winegrower from Erbach, Rheingau I took the other evening at Berlin wine merchant Planet Wine I’m not sure how to … Continue reading
Berlin Riesling Diary: Day 10 – Champagne, Gossip & Decadence (according to Frank Krüger)
I know that this blog is sometimes very serious, even dead serious, but this is not one of those days. Today, it is literally dead funny. You see, I’m still on this God-awful VIP-trip and many of today’s VIPs, are … Continue reading