(Manfred Klimek)
Week after week, a wine recommendation from me appears under the recipe of the week in WELT AM SONNTAG. It is precisely selected, often tasted very deliberately – and yet, unfortunately, it remains little more than a marginal note. Unlike the column, which probably reaches far more people. So it is time to publish these tips individually. In a world situation in which perhaps only wine can still offer healing – for a few glasses at least.
The recipes themselves remain invisible here, in this text. For copyright reasons. What remains is the wine – and the freedom to think of it anew each time. Without specifications, without constraints, without the usual pairing dogma that determines the recommendations here
So, five wines that do not need to explain themselves. Instead, they wait to be put to use. By readers who know that good pairing has less to do with rules than with curiosity.
Perfect with: a robust dish. This brings to mind an experiment I have been wanting to try for a long time. I take a bottle of dry white port from the cellar, Dirk Niepoort’s Dry-White (non-vintage) – a classic among those wines that have existed for centuries. It is not quite as dry on the palate as expected – which is an advantage here when it comes to food pairing. On the nose, nuts, brown toast and a little pineapple and hay. And then the somewhat sharper aroma of the spirit traditionally added to port wines – the British love it. Surprisingly fresh on the palate, weighty, not primarily fruity and also filling. As sacrilege, I drink it diluted with a little soda water alongside the cod – perfect!
For €11.49 from www.silkes-weinkeller.de
Perfect with: A robust dish. Artichokes, Serrano ham, plenty of olive oil and, alongside them, a fried egg that intervenes almost neutrally. This challenges two sides of my palate. First, the one that would campaign here for an equally robust, salty-mineral wine. And secondly, the one I prefer today: the one calling for a rather neutral, sweetish wine. So I retrieve the 2024 “Prachtstück” from Weingut Metzger from my fridge and pour this cuvée of Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay into my rarely used glasses for young white wines. On the nose, a little stone fruit, a hint of gooseberry, a hint of freshly washed Tupperware and then, at the end, a surprisingly strong note of peach. Pure drinking pleasure on the palate – suited to the temperatures outside.
For €7.50 from www.ludwig-von-kapff.de
Perfect with: A Welschriesling could work very well here – and I have just tasted a great many good ones, which I want to describe in more detail in a later column here in the paper. When spring is really asserting itself. So today, with this spring dish, I take another wine from the fridge, a wine made from the Alvarinho grape, which, to my mind, deserves more of the limelight than many other Vinho Verdes from Portugal: the 2024 Alvarinho Deu-la-Deu from the Adega de Monção cooperative. On the nose, first a surge of tropical fruit, plenty of chilled, delicate pineapple. Very quickly followed by green tea (the leaves), a little pomegranate as well and a hint of Campari. Enormously sweetly drinkable on the palate, with the regionally customary portion of salt and a small touch of Negroni bitterness that quickly has me pouring the next glass.
For €11.50 from www.koelner-weinkeller.de
Perfect with: Chilli and chives: here I use a variety-agnostic natural wine that combines brilliantly with these two flavour bombs and also with the prawns: the 2023 Naturweiss Gutswein (Müller-Thurgau, Riesling, Silvaner, Pinot Blanc) from Jule Eichblatt and Kai Schätzel (Weingut Schätzel, Rheinhessen), one of Germany’s best and most reasonably priced natural wines – and, at 11.5% alcohol, pleasingly light. Not an orange wine, as its colour might suggest: the cuvée’s musts were simply left on their skins for different lengths of time. On the nose, green and white tea, and also a hint of oolong, followed by dry meadow herbs, a little stone fruit, a little thyme, a little sea foam. Juicy on the palate, precisely and irresistibly drinkable, followed by the creaminess of the partly used flor yeast (Sherry method). A successful experiment in a new and entirely different German wine.
For €14.00 from www.gute-weine.de
Perfect with: The world is dancing on volcanoes! So it is only logical to retrieve a wine from a volcanic region from the cellar: the I Vigneri Salvo Foti Rossi 2023 from Sicily. The volcano, whose regular eruptions we all know, is called Etna and provides perfect rock for very salty, aromatic and delicate grapes. The cuvée of Nerello Mascalese and Cappuccio is made using a brutally traditional method, without any modern frills, and is consequently refreshingly rustic. On the nose, first dramatic juniper (as in gin), then eucalyptus, rosehip, sunflowers, damson, blueberry and Mediterranean meadow herbs. On the palate (drink chilled at around 12 degrees), wholesome and unpretentious. The finest interpretation of a country wine.
For €29.75 from www.weinkombinat.com
Perfect with: I am Viennese. There is no such thing as Viennese cuisine – it was and remains the cuisine of the entire Danube monarchy. And then there is Salzburg. It is not on the Danube. And to every Viennese person it is an alien body that belongs in Bavaria. But we owe the Salzkammergut cuisine tafelspitz consommé (“broth” was not a word anyone used at the Habsburg court). And the semolina dumplings, too. To finally get to the wine, a simple Veltliner is more than perfectly suited: I take the 2023 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel “Treu” from Mathias Hirtzberger’s Weinhofmeisterei from the fridge. On the nose, first a hint of grapefruit, then briefly mandarin, quickly followed by apricot, a little peach and no shortage of tropical fruit. On the palate, the embrace of the coming spring. Damn delicious!
For €26.80 from www.moevenpick-wein.de