The Wineparty
(Manfred Klimek / Björn Grebner – photo) I am sitting in the warm light of the last warm rays of sunshine of an autumn that, as so often by now, is far too warm, in the garden of a Franconian inn (inn always sounds strange, but it is what it is in the plural) – so; I am sitting in the inn, four bottles, four glasses in front of me, each with Read the full article…
(by Manfred Klimek) “Born in Pain” – ten years ago, this was the title of a Tatort episode with Felix Murot (Ulrich Tukur), which focused less on murders (of which there are many in this Tatort) than on insight. A film about wounding and self-questioning. About what remains when one person falls and another gets back up. Perhaps Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / WELT am SONNTAG) Wine critic for WELT am SONNTAG for 15 years. Alongside the column, every week below the recipes of the brilliant chef Volker Hobl, there is a wine tip from me to accompany one of Hobl’s dishes – usually very Mediterranean, very modern and very healthy cuisine. Recently, I have increasingly been asked to share a few of these Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek text & photo) He sits at the table, his hands initially still, then patting the bottle of Riesling, the green bottle on the table, with the saint, the bishop, on the label – this little Baroque theatre that has been telling wine connoisseurs and casual drinkers alike since 1961: Nothing fashionable is invented here, here contemporary winemaking is always regarded as Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / WELT am SONNTAG) When we look at the vineyards in California or Oregon this autumn, we see nothing less than a scenario that makes one wonder: around thirty per cent of the grapes in the two main US growing regions are not expected to be harvested this year. Not because the weather failed to produce suitable grapes for harvesting, but simply because the Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek) There are crises that do not merely mark an end, but the beginning of something else. The cliché that every crisis is also an opportunity is still nonsense – just like the agonisingly prescribed positive thinking. But what are the opportunities in the current wine crisis, actually? Sales are falling, entire harvests remain unharvested, the Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, editorial department) The Saar is a place in between. Too large to be tranquil, too rugged to market itself, too beautiful to be forgotten. A landscape that interrupts: in the south, its vineyards end at the old steelworks of Völklingen, rusty, defiant, like an industrial epilogue to nature. In the north, it runs Read the full article…
(Editorial department) The 2025 German wine harvest is small. Very small. At 7.3 million hectolitres, it is at its lowest level for 15 years. The German Wine Institute states the figures soberly, almost in passing – and yet this report contains more of the future than the industry may perhaps want to acknowledge. For what is hinted at here is not a crisis. Read the full article…
German text attached below (Editorial Department, BBC) The Catholic Church and Its Holy Wine: Blessing, Authority and History Throughout its long history – often dark and powerful – the Catholic Church not only spread the Gospel to distant countries, but also wine. The “divine nectar of grapes,” as the Bible says, was Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, WELT am SONNTAG, photo: Moueix) It seems like a provocation, and it is one: Château Lafleur, a small and world-famous wine estate in the equally small and world-famous region of Pomerol – where some of the world’s most prominent wine estates reside – is leaving the prestigious area in terms of wine law. The 2025 drought has an already almost cruel Read the full article…
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