Photo courtesy of Heart's Delight on Facebook

Here at Terroirist, we are big supporters of the Heart’s Delight Wine Tasting & Auction, Washington, DC’s premiere wine and food event that we wrote about last year.

To refresh you, Heart’s Delight is a four-day celebration bringing together winemakers, celebrity chefs, gourmands, and wine enthusiasts to raise money for the American Heart Association.

The week culminates with a Grand Tasting Reception and Auction on Saturday, May 4th. Guests will enjoy wine from outstanding producers such as Château Pontet-Canet and Château Léoville Poyferré from Bordeaux, Chile’s Concha y Toro, and Argentina’s Bodegas Catena Zapata. From closer to home, local brewery DC Brau Brewing Company will be pouring its well-regarded craft beers.

For fortification, attendees will be able to munch on delicious bites from exceptional chefs such as Chicago’s Graham Elliot, New York’s Gabrielle Hamilton of PRUNE, and local favorites like Sebastien Archambault of Blue Duck Tavern.

During the reception, guests can peruse the many wonderful silent auction items available for bidding, including bottles of Krug Champagne, a case of Château Cos d’Estournel, several great trips and many restaurant packages. Later in the evening, a live auction will feature even more impressive trip packages, experiences and of course, wine! Some of the best lots include a VIP dinner at New York’s Gramercy Tavern including 18 vintages of La Mission Haut Brion going back to 1948, two cases of high-scoring 2010 Bordeaux, and an insider’s trip to Italy, including VIP tastings in Tuscany.

This year, Terroirist is very excited to be able to offer our readers tickets to the Saturday event for 50% OFF the regular price! Just go to the web site for Saturday tickets, enter the discount code TERROIRIST, and at checkout your price for the Tasting Reception & Auctions will be $125 instead of $250.*

So, if you live in the Metro Washington area — or want to make a weekend trip! — please consider buying a ticket and joining us for what promises to be another fantastic year of Heart’s Delight. We hope to see you there!

*Discount only applies to the Tasting Reception & Auctions ticket, not the other portion’s of Saturday’s event lineup. If you purchase a ticket at $125, it will not be tax deductible. You can purchase a full price ticket for $250 and $125 of the cost may be tax deductible. Consult a tax professional for guidance.

Les Chanteurs de Bourgogne: they drink, then they sing!

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending my first La Paulée de New York, a week-long celebration that founder Daniel Johnnes calls an “uncontrolled, unplugged, unleashed expression of Burgundy,” and that Tyler Colman submits is “hedonistic to the extreme.”

Johnnes, the wine director for Daniel Boulud’s restaurant group, founded La Paulée in 2000 as homage to La Paulée de Meursault, a traditional end-of-harvest celebration in Burgundy. In recent years, the American version has alternated between New York and San Francisco. The full event consists of four days of seminars, formal tastings, lunches and dinners, but the main event is always the Gala Dinner—a formal affair where collectors engage in “friendly but intense competition . . . as bottles are uncorked, shared and imbibed.”  Or, as Lettie Teague calls it, “a very expensive BYO meal.”

Despite it being my first time, I felt I was adequately prepared for the Paulée experience, and upon reflection, I think I was able to make the most of it. There’s a fair amount of misperception out there about the event, so in the spirit of sharing, I offer this list of ten suggestions for how to maximize your enjoyment at what is the greatest wine event in the country.

DO: Go with friends!

Johnnes says La Paulée is intended to evoke “the Burgundy spirit of generosity and camaraderie.” And there’s no better way to capture that spirit than to share a glass with friends. Having Burg-loving companions with you for these events makes everything better. You can certainly make lots of new friends (more on that below), but it is a lot more fun to have someone you know around to debate the current vintage at a tasting, discuss the wines being passed at a dinner, and join forces when moving around in search of pours at the Gala.

DON’T: Spend your money on the rare wine dinners or lunches!

As I mentioned, the Gala is the main attraction of La Paulée, but there’s a lot more going on, most of which is absurdly expensive. For example, Wednesday night included a “Rare Wine Dinner” featuring Champagne Salon, a vertical of Dauvissat Chablis going back to 1983, and a ridiculous selection of Roumier wines, including a 1955 Bonnes Mares, all direct from the domaines’ cellars. The price for admission?  $4,750 per person. Friday night featured a similar “Legends Dinner” for the same price, but this time the wines were from Domaine Leflaive and the legendary Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

I don’t know about you, but $5,000 is a lot of money to spend on a dinner, even if it does include three older vintages of La Tâche (1971, 1978 and 1985). Here’s the thing, though: all told, the dinners are not a very good value, and you have no control over the wine and food. So here’s my suggestion—and one that more and more Burg-o-philes have been choosing in recent years—skip the pricey “official” events, make a reservation at one of the scores of great restaurants in Manhattan, and bring some great bottles to enjoy with friends in a more relaxed setting. That’s exactly what my group did this year, at the wonderful Corton in Tribeca, where we popped the corks on some great bottles, including a magnum of 1982 Pierre Gimonnet Champagne, a 1990 Leflaive Pucelles (older than any of the Pucelles at the “Legends” Dinner), a 1990 Leroy Brulées, a 1993 Méo-Camuzet Clos de Vougeot, and a 1967 Cathiard Suchots, among many, many others.

DO: Attend the Grand Tasting!

That said, you absolutely must attend Saturday afternoon’s Grand Tasting, which features 34 of the best domaines from Burgundy pouring a selection of wines (usually four) from the most recently released vintage—in this case, the gorgeous 2010s. In many cases, these are rare, expensive, highly-allocated wines that you might not have a chance to taste, let alone buy, anywhere else. For a budding Burgundy collector like myself, it was an invaluable opportunity to gauge the vintage characteristics, but also to identify my own stylistic preferences among the varied producers. Without La Paulée, it would take months, if not years, and hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to compare and contrast the styles of, say, Dujac versus Fourrier.

I have only been drinking Burgundy for a few years, so I don’t have much of a reference point, but I can say this: across the board, 2010 was a fantastic vintage. The whites have amazing freshness, and are delicious now, but also have the structure to age (premox concerns notwithstanding). In particular I enjoyed the entire lineup from Christian Moreau of Chablis, and the Les Preuses from both Dauvissat and Fèvre, the latter of which practically pulsed with electric acid and minerality. The Bâtard-Montrachets from Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey and Leflaive also were predictably brilliant. Olivier Lamy’s wines, on the other hand, were reminiscent of chewing on wood chips.

The reds were equally, if not more, stunning. Bright fruit, supported by ample acidity and substantial, but not overbearing, tannins. These wines were oh-so-tasty last month, but are built to last seemingly forever. The highlights of the tasting, for me, were Liger-Belair’s Echézeaux, Hudelot-Noellat’s Romanée St. Vivant, and Roumier’s Ruchottes-Chambertin. These grand crus are not cheap—they will eat into your retirement, but also will drink well into your retirement. For relative(!) values, look to the village wines of Gevrey-Chambertin (especially examples from Fourrier and Trapet) or Vosne Romanee (Mugneret-Gibourg and Hudelot-Noellat). I also very much enjoyed Lafarge’s whole lineup of Volnays.

DON’T: Forget to pace yourself (or overdo it)!

So you have to go to the Grand Tasting, but the Gala is only a few hours later that day. How do you do it? SPIT! Don’t drink too much (or any) wine in the afternoon, or your night will be ruined. Trust me; it’s a marathon, not a sprint. The Gala starts around 6:30pm, ends after 11:00pm, then the after-party, which lasts into the wee hours of the morning. La Paulée helpfully provides plastic spit cups in addition to your souvenir Riedel tasting glass, and buckets are everywhere (and are frequently emptied), so take advantage. There’s also some great food at the afternoon event, so don’t try to evaluate over 100 wines on an empty stomach! My advice also is to go back to your hotel and take a nap after the tasting, and maybe squeeze in a run or something. Whatever you need to do to prepare yourself for the big event.

DO: Be “aggressively friendly”!

The Grand Tasting is not the place for wallflowers. You cannot be afraid to introduce yourself to strangers, and you cannot be reluctant to ask people for tastes of wine. If you stay put at your own table and never leave, you are severely limiting the number of wines you will get to try. Get up, move around, shake hands, and express interest in what others are drinking. BUT don’t be a jerk. Aggressive, but friendly, is the name of the game. If you act entitled to a taste, or worse yet, demand one, you will be shunned. Ask nicely, be gracious and complimentary.

Jim Clendenen, proprietor of Au Bon Climat Winery in Santa Barbara, was at the other end of my table. He brought tons of great wine with him. I have never met him before, and none of my friends knew him, but I introduced myself anyway. Within minutes I had a taste of 2001 Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux in my glass. This may very well be the only taste of Jayer I ever have in my life (at over $5K per bottle, it’s a safe bet), and it was suitably amazing. If I wasn’t aggressively friendly, I would have missed out.

(Stay with me for five more tips after the jump!)

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"Winzer Weber"

This entry is part of my German Riesling Adventure, a weeklong trip to wine country last August. To read the rest of the posts, including the introduction, click here.

After our visit to Geltz-Zilliken, where we also tasted the wines of Peter Lauer as part of the SaarRieslingSommer festival, we drove to the northern Saar for an appointment at Hofgut Falkenstein.

Hofgut Falkenstein is a relatively young (for Germany) winery, having existed around 30 years, yet everything about the place is traditional and makes it seem like it’s been around forever. The vines are old (over 70% are 30+ years old, the oldest are between 60 and 80). The grapes are harvested by hand and crushed in whole clusters with an old spindle press. The wines are fermented with natural yeast and aged in ancient 1000-liter oak casks before being bottled and labeled by hand. Like I said, old school.

Erich Weber, the winemaker and proprietor, is himself something of a throwback. He calls himself “Winzer Weber,” which means wine grower, as he prefers to let the land and the grapes do most of the work. Lars Carlberg describes Erich as “one of the most genuine and modest growers in the region.” Hofgut Falkenstein is a labor of love, not a financial investment. As Erich told me during our visit, “Too much money is something not so good.”

We tasted through the lineup of 2011 wines with Erich and his son, Johannes, one of three brothers, but the one most likely to take over from his father some day. The curly-haired Johannes attends Geisenheim, the famous winemaking school I mentioned in my introduction, and is every bit as passionate about the land and the wine as his dad. If I had to guess, we were meeting with another future “Winzer Weber.”

Hofgut Falkenstein grows a bit of Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, but as this was a Riesling adventure, that’s what we stuck with. The wines overall are of tremendous quality. Pure and precise, subtly sweet, and refreshing. I had no history with the estate before this visit, so I cannot compare the 2011 lineup to prior vintages, but I can say that we enjoyed every wine we tasted. I should add here that this tasting was conducted in perhaps the most serene setting of our entire trip. We gathered with the Webers around a picnic table, surrounded by brick-walled gardens, overlooking steep, slate vineyards beckoning down towards the village below. It was a relaxed tasting, punctuated by wide grins and hearty laughs; the epitome of how good wine and good people can elevate an experience into something magical. Join me below for my impressions of the wines… Read the rest of this entry »

This entry is part of my German Riesling Adventure, a week long trip to wine country last August. To read the introduction, click here.

We landed early in the morning in Frankfurt and, after trying in vain to figure out how to operate the car’s navigation system in German (which neither of us speak), headed out toward Trier, not far from where the Mosel River snakes its way into Luxembourg. We did some sightseeing but, as this was a wine tasting trip, we quickly had to make our way south into the Saar, a wine region along a main tributary of the Mosel. The Saar is a small area of winegrowing (so much so that it is easily forgotten now that it has been folded into the larger Mosel region on wine labels), but it has a handful of strong producers working with excellent terroir.

Our destination was Saarburg, in the southern part of the valley, and specifically the estate of Weingut Forstmeister Geltz–Zilliken. Our visit happened to coincide with the SaarRieslingSommer festival, a weekend tour where nine different wineries – and several guest producers – opened their doors to visitors, and for a small fee you could taste all day at any of the stops. Therefore, while at Zilliken, we also were able to taste the wines of Peter Lauer.

Like David, I was introduced to Lauer’s wines by Phil Bernstein, and was immediately hooked. The wines are made by Florian Lauer, part of the new generation of up-and-coming winemakers I mentioned in the introduction to this series. Four generations of winemakers preceded Florian, who is in his early 30s. The 2012 vintage will be his eighth, after taking over from his father, Peter.

The Lauers do a few things differently than other producers in the Saar. For one, they label most of their wine by the site from which the grapes were harvested, preserving the individual subplots of the Ayler Kupp that were lumped together by the 1971 Wine Law. Second, they bottle their wines by individual cask numbers (called “fass” in German), although it is more accurate to say they keep certain bottlings from certain sites the same from year to year, even if individual casks or tanks end up being blended together. Third, they use their own internal classification of style, from trocken to feinherb, and some that are “trocken to feinherb,” which usually means the wine is just above the legal limit of residual sugar to be labeled trocken. Finally, Lauer’s wines are grouped together in three tiers: silver swirls on the label indicate the entry-level wines; green are the mid-range; and gold are the “beste parzellen,” or the top sites. It is worth noting that the handwriting on the labels belongs to Florian’s mother, Julia. (Also note: According to Lars Carlberg, Lauer is set to join the VDP next year, so some of the wines may get renamed.)

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These guys know how to party

During an episode reporting on the Rudy K. case, the syndicated television program “Inside Edition” buys an allegedly fake bottle of 1953 Château Pétrus from Park Avenue Liquors in New York City.

The 2012 vintage in Pfalz, Germany is setting up to be “absolutely amazing.” So says Bill Hooper for LarsCarlberg.com.

Nicolas Glumineau, former chief operations officer at Chateau Montrose, is now taking over operating duties at the Roederer-owned Bordeaux estates Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Château de Pez, Château Bernadotte and Château Haut Béausejour.

In the New York Times, Eric Pfanner shows some love for Aglianico. It’s a grape frequently ignored for better known Italian varieties such as Nebbiolo or Sangiovese, but it can produce some remarkable, compelling wines in the right soils and hands that are as ageworthy as some top Baroli.

“If you can forgive the schmaltz, these flights of fancy actually yield some scenes of legitimate poignancy.” Keith Levenberg pens the most honest review of the “Drops of God” books yet.

You can’t avoid it this time of year: Thanksgiving wine recommendations! In Bon Appetit, Levi Dalton has a unique perspective on pairing. Eric Asimov also strays from the traditional advice, suggesting a Hudson Valley Tocai Friulano, among others.

In the Wall Street Journal, Will Lyons introduces readers to the charms of Madeira, an under-appreciated fortified sweet wine from a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Morocco.

“There were wooden cases of wine stacked all the way to the ceiling — wines of impeccable pedigree and provenance, but in a bit of a perilous jumble.” Elsewhere in the Journal, Lettie Teague gets a rare peek inside Robert Parker’s 10,000-bottle wine cellar. “Watch the broken glass,” Parker cautioned.

In the Huffington Post, Brad Haskel blames Parker (and Wine Spectator) for “[h]igh alcohol levels, overuse of highly toasted wood barrels, commercial planting of grapes that are not conducive to where they are planted, industrial yeast, [and] sanitizing flavors with winemaking techniques.”

For Eater.com, Talia Baiocchi provides a guide to 22 restaurants with some of the best value wine lists in the country.

Time Magazine has the news that the top U.S. military officer in Europe lost his chance to run the U.S. Navy because he took a military plane to Dijon, France to attend an event sponsored by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, an international society of Burgundy wine enthusiasts. (hat tip: Alder Yarrow)

Frank J. Prial (Photo: New York Times)

Chinese police found 10,000 bottles of fake Bordeaux in an empty house. Interestingly, it was not the high-end Château Lafite Rothschild, but rather the entry-level wines from the DBR collection.

Speaking of forgeries, more photos of Rudy Kurniawan’s house emerged in court filings, as revealed by Don Cornwell in the still-going strong thread on the Wine Berserkers message board.

Tom Wark takes note of Liquor Library, a new store at the Las Vegas airport: “[W]ine lovers can now feel at ease knowing that they don’t have to wait the ten minutes it takes to go from the airport to the nearest liquor store to get their hands on a good bottle of Sparkling Wine for their ride over to The Strip.”

“Helmut König’s team and the enologists of the working group of Ulrich Fischer in Neustadt have developed ‘Practicable Milestones’ in order to enable wine-makers to lower the risk of the production of biogenic amines.” What does that mean? Scientists are trying to prevent headaches!

In Businessweek, Donna Abu-Nasr has the remarkable story of two Syrian winemakers who are still making wine while their country is in the midst of a violent conflict that has killed more than 35,000 people.

In Palate Press, Remy Charest issues a spirited defense of Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the Year (and offers his own guess for #1!).

Meanwhile, in the Spectator, Matt Kramer argues that a country’s drinking culture can end up holding back the success of its wine industry.

“[The 100-point system] has homogenised the American palate, and people have relinquished their own decision-making abilities and personal preferences in favor of someone else’s.” An enlightening interview with Dustin Wilson, Wine Director of New York’s four-star Eleven Madison Park.

Wilson is one of the four sommeliers featured in the new wine documentary, “SOMM.” The film’s director, Jason Wise, was interviewed by Wine Spectator.

“The 2012 California wine grape harvest yielded generous amounts of high quality fruit, and winemakers across the state are describing this year’s vintage as ‘excellent,’ ‘outstanding’ and ‘ideal.’” The Wine Institute provides a harvest report.

At Drinkhacker, Christopher Null participates in a vertical tasting of Le Rêve by Domaine Carneros, the sparking wine house I profiled here in September.

On a sad note, “Frank J. Prial, whose Wine Talk column in The New York Times introduced many Americans to the world of wine in the 1970s, when a new passion for fine food and drink was taking hold in the country, died on Tuesday in West Orange, N.J. He was 82.” Eric Asimov penned the obituary for the Times.

The ancient vines of Carlisle Vineyard

“Sylvie Cazes, president of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux and co-owner of Chateau Lynch Bages, will be stepping down from her role as director of Chateau Pichon Comtesse de Lalande,” reports Decanter.

Is it too early to start thinking about wines for Thanksgiving? (Yes.) In Forbes, Katie Bell bucks the trend of recommending American wine with your turkey; instead, she suggests uncorking something “playful, intelligent, and good at loosening up a crowd” — Italian wine!

Speaking of Turkey, Alder Yarrow heads to the European Wine Bloggers Conference, “keen to get an inside look into Turkey’s burgeoning wine scene, which, despite leaning on thousands of years of history, has really only gotten going in the last 10 years.” 

Stephen Tanzer seeks out the best new values in New Zealand Pinot Noir, for those who are “starved for fresher, cheaper alternatives to Burgundy.”

Did you know that today is International Tempranillo Day? Neither did I. Chris Macias of the Sacramento Bee brings word of the effort to raise awareness of the noble Rioja grape, and mentions a couple of good California examples of the varietal.

In Wine Spectator, Tim Fish sits down for a long lunch with two Terroirist faves, Adam Lee of Siduri and Mike Officer of Carlisle, to discuss the 2012 vintage. Officer calls it “the most difficult easy vintage I ever had.”

In addition to the end of harvest, Officer has much more to celebrate: Carlisle has been named Winery of the Year by Snooth’s Gregory Dal Piaz!

Weygandt Wines profiles Yannick Amirault, one of the top vignerons of Bourgueil and St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil.

In sad news, Alsace’s Domaine Lucien Albrecht has filed for bankruptcy. I am a big fan of Albrecht’s Cremant d’Alsace Brut Rosé as an affordable sparkler. Indeed, there’s a glass of it in my profile picture.

Yesterday we brought you news of Charlie Trotter’s million-dollar wine auction. Well, the auction just got a bit smaller, as Eater reports that 60 cases of wine have gone missing on their way to the auction house!

The Ürziger Würzgarten vineyard, with construction cranes in the background. (Uploaded to Flickr by Vincisive)

Amazon.com isn’t the only large online retailer planning to allow wineries to sell directly to consumers. As CNBC reports, Wine.com is setting up a marketplace to make it easy for small wineries to sell through its website.

In the Washington Post, Dave McIntyre profiles Lawrence Meinert, “a wine-loving geologist who has made a career out of analyzing and defining the most indefinable concept of wine: terroir.” 

Chicago chef Charlie Trotter is auctioning off his million-dollar wine collection. Count me in for the Nebuchadnezzar of Trockenbeerenauslese. I only wish there was more than one!

The San Francisco Chronicle provides a guide to Sonoma tasting rooms. I can vouch for Iron Horse, and fellow Terroirist Robby Schrum has enjoyed visits with Porter Creek and Joseph Swan.

In a piece that praises California vintners like Steve Matthiasson and Steve Lagier for making wine from “oddball” grapes, Elin McCoy reviews Jancis Robinson’s just released book, Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavours.

Lily-Elaine Hawk Wakawaka tastes through a range of Chardonnays from Oregon and California. Make sure you click on the comic!

Ever wonder where NYC bartenders go to drink on their time off?  Serious eats reveals that Terroir Wine Bar, among others, is a popular choice.

The Los Angeles Times reviews the latest English-language volume of the Japanese manga, “Drops of God.” Terroirist Sarah Hexter reviewed the first volume last year. Like many others who have been following the series from the start, I am extremely disappointed at the publisher’s puzzling decision to skip ahead in the story with the “New World” episode.

Talia Baiocchi’s latest post for Wine Spectator asks why people end up falling for wine. Her journey began in college: “[T]iring of the endless stream of Bud Light forties and vodka sodas, I started stocking up on cheap wine at a shop on Broadway in New York City that was, and still is, a sort of Filene’s Basement of wine retail.”

Finally, Decanter reports that “Work on the hugely controversial Mosel bridge has re-started, to the dismay of a vocal band of dedicated protesters” like Katharina Prüm, with whom I had the pleasure of visiting in August. It will be a shame if any of the legendary vineyards in the bridge’s path are harmed in any way.

(via Slashfood.com)

It’s Election Day! Michele Borboa offers wine pairing advice for Democrats and Republicans looking to party.

On Boston Public Radio, Jonathan Alsop has recommendations from swing-state wineries like Linden in Virgina.

Tom Wark reflects on the arguments people make when alcohol is on the ballot.

In non-election news, The New York Times’ Eric Asimov explains how to get the most out of your interactions with “your new best friend” – the sommelier!

Speaking of sommeliers, elsewhere in the Times Kenan Christiansen reviews “Somm,” the new documentary that “follows four promising young sommeliers as they mount an all-out effort to attain the highest distinction in their field: the title of master sommelier.”

And speaking of Asimov, fellow wine scribe Jon Bonné recommends his new book, “How to Love Wine: A Memoir and Manifesto,” in which Asimov advises readers to “seek[] pleasure in wines simple and great – and wav[e] off a didactic army of acronymed wine experts and their overly firm ways to appreciate wine.”

“[Shafer's Hillside Select] is a benchmark for what Napa Cabernet can be, incredibly rich and powerful but with soft, silky tannins that seem to be a signature of the Stags Leap appellation.” In the Wall Street Journal, Jay McInerney writes about “The Near-Accidental Brilliance of Shafer Vineyards.”

“I’m tempted to go regress to the quiet and cold zone, remove myself from connectivity.” From Alice Feiring, a remarkable piece on the impact of Hurricane Sandy.

On California’s north coast, this year’s harvest “could be the region’s largest crop in five years.”

Dan Fredman reports on a fascinating tasting of Lebanon’s Chateau Musar, “some of the planet’s most interesting (and controversial) wines.”

Caroline Henry tackles the delicate relationships between large Champagne houses and grower producers in a thought-provoking post at Palate Press.

Finally, if you are a fan of Champagne, go check out this great post by Pamela Heiligenthal at Enobytes on post-disgrogement maturation, which includes the best graphical representation of Champagne evolution I’ve ever seen.

This really was the “Summer of Riesling” for Terroirist.com. David started exploring the grape, sampling some excellent examples. Salil enjoyed some brilliant older vintages, and reported on the Theise/Skurnik 2011s from the Nahe, Rheingau and Mosel. Me? I decided to go straight to the source for my education: my wife and I set out for Germany in late August.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reporting on my trip, the wines we tasted, the producers we visited, and the vineyards upon which we gazed. But first, a few themes emerged during the trip and upon further reflection at home.

Germany's Mosel Valley

German Winemakers are True Terroirists. Other than perhaps Burgundy, Germany might be the epicenter of “terroirism.” Jancis Robinson thinks Riesling is “the greatest white wine grape in the world,” in part because it is so good at expressing terroir.  In my opinion, no other wine is able to showcase a truer sense of place than German Riesling. Visit after visit, the winemakers were proud to show off the different soil types from which they farmed their grapes – trays filled with gray, red and blue slate are almost as ubiquitous in German tasting rooms as Schnitzel is on the village menus. But handling a piece of slate at a table is nothing like standing in a vineyard and seeing for yourself just how rocky the terrain really is. In the Mosel Valley in particular, there are vineyards planted on hillsides where giant slate rock formations interrupt the perfectly parallel rows of vines – and others where winemakers actually had to blast through rock with dynamite to make use of their land. In Germany, minerality is reality – not just a marketing slogan.

The German Wine Industry is in Good Hands. At a great majority of the wine estates we visited, the next generation has taken over from their parents, and the future is bright. Young winemakers across the country are banding together to make quality wines, modernize winemaking techniques and raise the profile of the German wine industry. Many of them attended school together at Geisenheim – the premier oenology program in Germany. In addition to sharing tips and tricks, this group travels together, parties together, and shares a camaraderie and passion for wine that is refreshing. Some, like Stefan Steinmetz, were thrust into huge responsibility through tragedy. Others, like Florian Lauer and Christoph Schaefer, work side by side with their fathers, learning to preserve tradition while still pursuing innovation to improve the product.

The Dryness Craze is For Real. Many articles have been written recently about the trend toward dry Riesling in Germany, primarily for their domestic market, but also creeping into their exports. This is readily apparent when visiting winemakers. Almost every tasting included a pronounced emphasis on the trocken end of the range, especially if the vintner has holdings that include an Erste Lage or Grosse Lage (top sites from which Grosses Gewächs wines are made) or vineyards of similar quality for those wineries who aren’t in the VDP. (Joh. Jos. Prüm was a notable exception – it continues to make beloved off-dry Rieslings, trends be damned, and its wine remains some of the best in the world.) So, get ready to see more and more dry wine in your local shops. Unfortunately, not everyone who is making wines on the drier side should actually be doing so, because not everyone has the terroir to do it successfully. Thankfully, most of the estates we visited, and that you’ll be hearing about in the coming weeks, are not in that category. We drank very well in Germany, and I look forward to sharing our experience with all of you.