The Wineparty
(Gerhard Ziegler / animated pic: runwayml) A telephone call with Georgia, once again: My counterpart Saba Kitiashvili is sitting somewhere between the end of the working day and the Georgian wine mission. He does not speak in grand slogans, but very concretely: about his studies, research, grape varieties, his own small vineyard and a wine that can now also be found through 8000 Vintages in Berlin. Kitiashvili Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / Editorial / animated pic: runwayml) Anyone who claims today that German or Austrian society is ossified receives a contradiction from winegrowing of all things. Not from start-ups, not from universities, not from ministries. But from cultural farmers, the cultural farming community of winegrowers, who extend the word culture to include innovation. This week I began a larger investigation into Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / Claude Auguste – wines / animated pic: runwayml) The history of Alsace begins with a misunderstanding. Or more precisely: with many misunderstandings. For centuries, Germans and French fought over this narrow strip between the Vosges and the Rhine. At times it was German, at times French, then German again and finally French again. Anyone walking through Ribeauvillé today, Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek: Text & Photo) In the photo above, a man is sitting at a green table and looks as ang'fressen out of the Wäsche' as people in Vienna do when they are actually in the best of moods. Beside him is a woman who is currently rearranging glasses and chairs. Behind them, vines, trees, an earlier Read the full article…
(Gerhard Retter / Editorial / animated pic: © Manfred Klimek – runwayml) In flutters the email from a well-known chef who is retiring after four decades. Big house, big name, big life. Attached: a meticulously maintained Excel list of his wine cellar. Lots of Bordeaux. Lots of Burgundy. Old vintages. Big names. And immediately the same Read the full article…
(Claude Auguste / Manfred Klimek / Editorial team) Carlo Petrini is dead. And with him disappears one of those rare figures in Europe who did not merely found a movement, but changed the culinary and culinary-political thinking of an entire era. Petrini was 76 years old. He died in the town of Bra in Piedmont, where his ideas also Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek) The Markgräflerland, a land of inns with gentle hills stretching towards the Black Forest, is a region that was conscientiously overlooked for a long time in German winegrowing – including and above all (shame on me) by me. Perhaps because it cultivates no great myth. Perhaps also because it is home to a grape variety whose name has roughly the same erotic effect as Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / animated pic: runwayml) France is drinking more beer than wine for the first time. Bang! A sentence that, just twenty years ago, would have sounded like a far-fetched, irrationally culturally pessimistic thesis, now suddenly stands as sober statistics. But what is truly astonishing is not the success of beer. It is the decline of everyday wine. Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek / WELT am SONNTAG / animated pic: rumwayml) I spoke on the telephone with Lenz Moser V (five). The number stands for the fifth Lenz Moser of this Austrian wine dynasty, which is known in the international wine business because Moser's grandfather, Lenz Moser the Third, revolutionised the “training” of vines in the vineyard in the 1950s. Read the full article…
(Manfred Klimek) The dispute over Austrian top winemaker Roland Velich and his Lutzmannsburg 2023, which was rated 100 points by James Suckling and nevertheless met resistance from official testers, initially appears to be a marginal note in winegrowing. In reality, however, this case tells us something much bigger. It is about power. About interpretive authority. Read the full article…
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