The Wineparty
(Manfred Klimek) It has taken a while, but the so-called “New Right” now also seems to have understood that the real culture war of our time is decided not at the ballot box, but also at the dining table, in the wine shop and during the evening wind-down – between those who drink wine and those who no longer do. In the Read the full article…
(Jürgen Howald / Manfred Klimek, Editorial team) It is no longer a secret: Germany’s best sparkling wines no longer need to be compared with Champagne. They now confidently taste of their origins, of slate and other terroir, of people who know that time and dosage (if there is still any) are more than bubbles. Anyone who today finds Griesel, Read the full article…
Actually, Martin Kerres, originally and somehow still a doctor, only wanted to have a house in Tuscany. Sun, olive trees, a small refuge in the Maremma with a distant view, where the wind drives the butterflies up the slope. But things turned out differently. Today, his Valdonica winery in Sassofortino produces almost 35,000 bottles a year. Recently, alongside the barrels and stainless-steel tanks in the cellar, there has also been an amphora (the Italians call it an “Anfora”), almost the height of a man, from which one of the region’s most exciting new wines comes.
(Manfred Klimek, Editorial team) It is not a thaw yet, but perhaps the first quiet creaking in the ice. An article in the still-current SPIEGEL. Title: “How much alcohol is really healthy?” Author Guido Kleinhubbert dares to do what hardly any major medium has attempted in the past three years: He breaks out of the WHO rhetoric’s sphere of influence. Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek) There are small turning points in the war waged by established ascetics in over-correct media against wine. One of them has just arrived, as so often, quietly — but in the very newspaper that over the past two years has distinguished itself as a mouthpiece for the morally charged demand for asceticism: the Süddeutsche Zeitung. There, where otherwise the missionary diligence of a traffic policeman is used to Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, Bernard Pawis Winery/Photo) My first journey to the East was twenty-five years ago. Back then, shortly after reunification, there were vines in sites that had been neglected for decades. Brick walls supported crumbling terraces, winemakers told of old times, when winegrowing was a cultural-policy alibi. People drank whatever was just about drinkable — with exceptional wines, Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, Editorial team, quotations from ORF Tirol) Sommelier scandal in Tyrol: From rumour to headline Only a few weeks ago, it seemed that criticism of the events in the Tyrolean Sommelier Association was taboo. Anyone who voiced doubts was quickly threatened with the press law — a tactic that in Austria has almost become folklore when it comes to keeping unpleasant matters Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, SWR screenshot) Once upon a time, on “Tatort”. Stuttgart, 2009. A German Sunday evening, scarcely capable of being more ritualised. Millions watch as the detectives stumble through the script, sometimes more, sometimes less originally. But this particular “Tatort” had a punchline that today, 16 years later, seems almost like science fiction: people were drinking. A lot of beer. Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek, WELT am SONNTAG, Getty Stock free) It stands there, among my many everyday goblets. It stands there alone, like a survivor from another era: my last Vinum Bordeaux glass made by the Kufstein glassblowers Riedel. Bought in 1988, when I was just beginning not only to drink wine, but also to learn to understand it. At that time, Riedel was known as Read the full article…
(Gerhard Retter text & photos, Editorial team, AI-generated main pic) Viewed from the outside — that is, from the street and in terms of image — Louis Roederer is a classic, traditional Champagne house with reputation and a resonant name. It may also sound like heavy going, like brass plaques and marble halls. In reality, however, Roederer is the opposite: a house that proves that Read the full article…
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