The Wineparty
(Editorial) Wine is no longer a status symbol – those times are currently fading away. Not a luxury product in large quantities, as throughout all the hype years of late. No longer just a hobby for people with money. Wine was and is conversation. Encounter. Contradiction in the glass. And now that wine is returning to normality, we want to talk more about wines again Read the full article…
Manfred Klimek & Editorial Which vines should remain – and which may/should go? This question is currently not being discussed publicly in German viticulture. Yet yesterday, an economic commentary on WELT Online spoke of a decline in vineyard areas of at least 50% in the near future. Is this German crisis-mongering once again? The German luxuriating in the worst-case scenario? In any case: 50% seems, despite all the Read the full article…
by Manfred Klimek It begins with a number. 98. It stands there, black on white, beneath a wine the likes of which Austria has never seen before. 98 Parker points for the Blaufränkisch “Ried Spitzerberg – Obere Spitzer”. The highest score ever awarded to an Austrian red wine. One can read this as an accolade. Or as an
(Pic: Reuters) by Claude Auguste In viticulture, it has always been a question of the harvest: When has the right moment come to cut, decide, act? Harvested too early, the wine remains green. Harvested too late, its future “oxidises”. Since 2020 (and before), here too, in the old, weatherproof world of the vines, Read the full article…
by Manfred Klimek / WELT am SONNTAG It smells of earth, of stable, also, imagined or not, of white pepper. A tractor drones in the distance; the Oder and the Polish border are less than ten kilometres away. Nothing indicates what one then encounters in the glass – excellent wines; made there where Read the full article…
by Manfred Klimek Ten years ago, young winemakers were the poster boys of a new wine world: glasses in hand, dirt under their fingernails, biodynamic, unpolished, international. They were regarded as proof that wine could be young, intelligent and uncompromising – not the burden of tradition, but a new beginning. Today, after almost ten years that now seem almost laughable, many of them find themselves in Read the full article…
(Photo: a photo from almost 20 years ago that aptly describes the eras of wine: Wachter-Wiesler, 2008) Text by Claude Auguste We have written it before, a few weeks ago, without drumroll: wine deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Not a PR stunt, not a whimsical slogan for distraction or amusement. But an idea that has grown over the past few weeks Read the full article…
Beirut. A topography of contrasts Special Report, Foreign Desk. By Gerhard Ziegler The approach to Beirut is an exercise in relativity. From Larnaca, it takes 25 minutes. Not enough time to climb seriously; not enough time to forget that one is flying. The coffee arrives and, barely served, the Airbus is already descending again towards the Mediterranean coast. On the ground: camouflage patterns, checkpoints, Read the full article…
By Gerhard Ziegler Toni Reisner was a civil servant. Today, together with friends, he looks after two vineyards in Burgenland – but not a single bottle leaves the private circle. A conversation about idealism, aching muscles and the joy of watching something grow. Mr Reisner, why does one do something like this – a lot of work, no sales, no big stage? Reisner: Read the full article…
by Risto Rieger Sunday, 10 a.m. I deliver wine. At 11.30 p.m. the evening before, I receive his notification via WhatsApp: it would be urgent, private gathering, sorry for the late message, would that be possible? I do not reply. At 10.15 a.m. I am there. He, the boss, restaurant manager or whatever, bleary-eyed, unshowered, taciturn. Eight cartons; I carry them one by one, Read the full article…
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