The Wineparty
(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…
(Claude Auguste, Editorial Team, Getty-History) In America, a late-night show is cancelled; in Europe, wine is put in the dock in the arts pages. And the mechanism is the same every time: constant dripping wears away the stone. No major blow, no heroic final battle. It is the humming that hardens into background noise, the daily micro-erosion of legitimacy. At first it is Read the full article…
(Editorial Team, Reuters – Photo) One could laugh if it were not so sad. The UN General Assembly is preparing an act for its 80th anniversary that places wine alongside cigarettes and crystal meth – and does so with four inconspicuous lines in the agenda item on “the prevention of non-communicable diseases”. It says, in dry terms, that it wants to Read the full article…
(Business Editorial Team, Reuters, Pic: ©Rainer Schönfeld) In China, the glass is emptying faster than anywhere else in the world. Where Bordeaux once flowed freely ten years ago and even Napa Cabernets from arch-enemy USA rose to become status symbols, entire wine shelves now stand untouched. Wine consumption in China has fallen since its peak approximately Read the full article…
(Editorial Team & Agency Material) Werner Näkel, born in 1953, has died. With him, the Ahr Valley loses an influential figure, and Germany a winemaker who, more than almost anyone else, represented the renaissance of Spätburgunder. Näkel belonged to the generation that freed German red wine from its sugary inconsequentiality in the 1980s and gave it international stature. As Read the full article…
(Claude Auguste, Editorial Team) There are wines that live from the tradition of vinification. And there are wines that were overrun by movements that believe wine is also a kind of political programme – the political statement of wine drinkers and consumers. At the end of the 1990s, the latter happened twice over: two ideological currents wanted to reinvent Chardonnay Read the full article…
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