Finally I’m back home after 2 weeks of agitated travelling, and I have lots of stories to tell from my trip to Shanghai, and some more from my subsequent getaway to Paris. But let’s start time-incoherent with a blind-tasting that kicked off my weekend in Paris. I was a guest at my friend Didier’s home and, as usual, we couldn’t meet without popping a few corks. We each added a couple of bottles to this tasting and they were served to us mixed and blind by Didier’s wonderful wife Mizuki, who has developed a hand for pouring the right bottles. Of course, I mostly brought German wines, as I also know Didier has a weakness for these (one among a few) and they’re rather hard to get in France. Here’s the first half of the tasting, dedicated to the white wines.
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After a spree to the Rheingau wine region on a beautiful sunday we were looking for a place to have dinner. While we couldn’t come up with any casual restaurant that day, we had the sudden inspiration to go for Patrick Kimpel‘s fine dining restaurant within the Hotel Kronenschlößchen in Hattenheim. Read the rest of this entry »
The vineyards of Rüdesheim not only figure among the most famous of the Rheingau region, they are certainly also the steepest. And the section that takes the crown is Berg Schlossberg, where inclination reaches 70%, meaning that for each meter in distance, the vineyard climbs 70 cm. Also, with a nearly perfect Southern orientation -the Rüdesheim vineyards are located exactly Read the rest of this entry »
As every year many of Germany’s top winemakers were presenting their newest vintage at the VDP Weinbörse in Mainz. I was again lucky to attend and get a personal first look on what is a particular vintage compared to the last years. Read the rest of this entry »
This was a Special day. After having tasted some of Robert Weil’s top wines at the 2006 vintage presentation, we had the opportunity to try 2 of Josef Leitz’ acclaimed dry Rieslings. Whereas Weil’s wines are well known since ages – they delivered many wines to royal families in the 19th century – Josef Leitz has only build up his reputation in the last years and did so with a totally different style of dry wines. Weil’s high-end dry Rieslings such as Gräfenberg generally appear very round and harmonious with fruit and a subtle minerality game ( The 2006 Kiedricher Gräfenberg Erstes Gewächs is much more closed than the 2005 and could be more of a long runner by the way ), whereas the high-end dry wines of Joseph Leitz from Rüdesheim are rather presenting themselves as wild and powerful Riesling bombs! Read the rest of this entry »
