Thursday evening I was sitting with my friend Jutta Pakenis in an excellent German restaurant on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn/New York called ‘Berlyn’ (see www.berlynrestaurant.com) where she took the above photo of me with a soft toy pretzel around my neck. The delicious edible pretzel in ‘Berlyn’ reminded me how few Americans realize that the pretzel came from Germany, where it is called a Brezel.
This moment made me see the two day marathon tasting of dry and medium-dry American Rieslings which Sean O’Keefe of Chateau Grand Traverse on the Old Mission Peninsula/Michigan had just organized for me (thank you also to Restaurant Hearth for providing space and great logistical support!) in an entirely new light. ‘Berlyn’ – whose name conflates Berlin with Brooklyn – is clearly an expression of the reawakening of Americans to their culture’s Germanic roots. The resurgence of interest in Riesling on the part of American winemakers and consumers is another.
I’m many people in one skin. At the tasting table in Restaurant Hearth on July 25th and 26th I was the wine critic trying to balance a positive attitude to the wines I was assessing (if your attitude’s negative, then even the greatest wines seem to have weaknesses) with a critical approach, because of course I wanted to decide how good or bad each of them was and why they’re that way. One of the other Stuart Pigotts is a gonzo journalist and cultural historian determined to hunt down the truth wherever it takes him and whatever it costs him (in time, effort, and also money). Sometimes I to have to travel half way around the world to get at the truth; other times I have to read a stack of books.
Recently I did a lot of reading around the subject of the changing perceptions of the Germanic side of American cultural identity in America. Food and drink are what scientists call a good “marker” for this, and I was very surprised how during the summer of 1914 the mood about all things German in America flipped from being overwhelmingly positive to strikingly negative. Years before the USA entered the First World War German-American culture suddenly became almost invisible in the media. If those seem like distant and therefore unimportant events, then just try to imagine present day America with all the Italian influence either removed or “de-italianized”.
Of course, the terrible events of the 20th century in Europe – of which the Holocaust was only the most horrendous – provide an obvious explanation for why this shift occurred and became long-term, but the fact is that a great many things of Germanic origin were denigrated in a manner that was neither a considered nor a nuanced response to events. I’d say this is the sure sign of a highly irrational process I call Cultural Ethnic Cleansing; in the case of food and drink the sub-category of Culinary Ethnic Cleansing. Let me give an example.
What could be more American than a hot dog and a Bud on the 4th of July? But actually they’re both German-American, just as the idea of enjoying them outdoors is. Look back at the wine lists of fancy restaurants on the West Coast pre-prohibition and you’ll invariably find domestic Rieslings are amongst the most expensive still wines on offer. On the East Coast things were not fundamentally different, though German Rieslings played the lead role there. Those wines went without saying.
It’s really encouraging to see growing willingness of America to see German-American culture, also food and drink, in a positive light, that is to readmit them to the Union. Sadly, there is a major obstacle to this process, which explains why the pretzel, that 4th of July hot dog and Bud, and Riesling are not widely recognized for what they are. Once history has been rewritten to efface things from it deemed politically incorrect and more than one generation passes, then it becomes necessary to actively hunt down the lost truth in order to recover it; history has then been defaced.
When I first came to America during the 1980s I was shocked by the way people of Germanic origin were so self-effacing about their roots. Chefs, lawyers and businessmen of Germanic origin were all doing serious self-censorship. Just imagine Irish-Americans actively avoiding talking about where their families came from!
All that struck me very forcefully in ‘Berlyn’ and changed the way I looked back at the two day American Riesling tasting which dominated my week in New York. At the end Sean O’Keefe said, “I think what you can often taste is a lack of self-confidence on the part of the winemakers.” Rosemary Gray, one of the best professional tasters I know in New York who joined O’Keefe and I for the entire tasting, identified several concrete aspects of the winemaking which seemed to stand in the way of some wines shining. This struck us as often being the result of winemakers over-compensating for the stylistic mistakes of earlier decades which often turned American Riesling into a soulless wine. That is surely also a sign of both weak self-confidence and the long shadow of the 20th century.
However, the best wines did not taste as if they were suffering from lack of winemaker self-confidence or any other problem. They shone and they did so on entirely their own terms, clearly inspired by the Riesling wines of the German-speaking world, but not aping them in any way. It struck me that the American wine media haven’t really grasped this yet development yet, often because of preconceived views of what America is and American wine can be. They are lagging behind the general reawakening of interest in German-American culture and need a wake-up call. I say to them, welcome to the United States of Riesling!