Category Archives: I Am Wine

Thank you Paul Grieco of Restaurant Hearth and Terroir wine bar in NYC !

“So you found a home in New York,” Paul Grieco said to me as I sat in a corner of  Restaurant Hearth (www.restauranthearth.com) with a glass of Mosel Riesling from  Weiser-Künstler lost in thought +++ I was thinking back 24 hours to when the first Long Night of German Wine in NYC had filled the room with people and excitement +++ my partner in this charity project in Berlin, where we already staged 14 of these events, Roy Metzdorf of Restaurant Weinstein and I were bowled over by the response in the Big Apple +++ within minutes of the door being opened at 11pm it was hard to get through the crush to taste the wines which Roy and I had donated from our cellars +++ “hey, pass me the 2001 Egon Müller Scharzhofberger !” someone begged me and it made seem so worth while to have waitted so long to open that bottle +++ just like in Berlin the atmosphere was one of uninhibited celebration and we opened numerous doors of Riesling perception +++

many of the visitors who each made a $40 donation to WEIN HILFT (see www.weinhilft.de – under which motto we collect money for the “Hope” HIV/AIDS foundation in Cape Town) were amazed by the way the dry 2006 Berg Rottland Riesling from Weingut Leitz in Rüdesheim/Rheingau seemed to effortlessly balance in spite of its 15% alocholic content +++ Roy’s “house wines”, which all make a serious style statement for the palate and eye were admired, also for the way the Weinstein name or logo were nowhere to be seen +++ finally Berlin style Dada Marketing has crossed the Big Pond and Madison Avenue will never be the same again ! +++ but for me the biggest surprise that evening came from Bruce Schneider (see below) who I knew as director of Wines of Germany in NYC, but who turns out to also be a talented New York  winemaker +++ he brought with him several vintages of Schneider Cabernet Franc (saldy no longer made due to the vineyard having been ripped out) and the 2006 was the most elegant red wine I ever tasted from Long Island +++ but yet more New York wine surprises followed the next day +++

Renaissance wine man of New York Bruce Schneider

the next afternoon I walked over to Hearth feeling pleassantly dazed and confused from the Long Night of German Wine to clear my head for a big tasting of 2010 Rieslings from the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York +++ Peter Becraft of Anthony Road Wine Co. drove into the city with 26 wines from more than a dozen producers which were the most exciting range of Finger Lakes wines I’ve ever experienced +++ my New York colleagues Josh Greene (editor of Wine & Spirits Magazine) and Howard Goldberg were no less imporessed than Roy and Marc Metzdorf +++ we agreed that although the excellent 2o10 vintage certainly helped achieve this, it wasn’t the only factor, rather improved winemaking also played an important role +++ stylistically the wines seemed to know where they wanted to go in a way that was seldom the case just a few years ago, so Olanet Wine it is TIME TO WAKE UP AND TAKE NEW YORK RIESLING SERIOUSLY !!! +++ then as we our tasting table was being cleared for restaurant service to begin at 6pm Josh Greene told me that he was staying at Hearth to have dinner with Stephen and Prue Henschke, the (Hill of Grace) famous winemakers from South Australia +++ and suddenly there they were and I was invited to join them; not only “shit” happens in America ! +++ and I learnt a lot from Prue about what sustainability demands in the often harsh Australian context (much sensitivity and hard work) +++ after dinner I ended up at the bar with several glasses of that Riesling watching Paul Grieco work the restuarant as if it were his second home, which it is in a way that their workplaces rarely are for restaurateurs +++ then before I knew it he’d told me that it was my second home, and who am I to argue ? +++ for the Long Night of German Wine and for Stuart Pigott, in NYC home is where the Hearth is

Randall Grahm extends his antenne to catch cosmic "terroir-waves"

If you think that I’m sometimes crazy then look at winemaker Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon winery of Santa Cruz in California (above) with whom I recently spent a fascinating afternoon in the Waterbar/San Francisco talking about whether terroir and wine journalism exist in America in the positive sense +++ the last thing I want to do is give the impression Randall is not serious so there’s a second picture of him (below) +++ I tasted many wonderful new Bonny Doon wines with him including the first impressive American Alvarinho and Nebbiolo I ever encountered, plus two great Syrah reds from 2007 (Bein Nacido and Alamo Creek vineyards) with terroir written all over them +++ I’ve known Randall since 20 years and it was inspiring both to see him scale new heights and to see that all the money from the sale of his Pacific Rim winery (how many million dollars is a 2 million bottle per year super-premium brand like this worth ?) did not go to his head +++

Is what America is really lacking "terroir-bodylangauge" ?

no time today to report on the first Long Night of German Wine in New York, but the whole point of not calling this a blog is that I can take my time to gather the right photos, quotes, etc to make the story worth reading +++ all of course, according to the motto:     NO FACEBOOK, NO TWITTER, NO BULLSHIT !

a whole week later I’m still trying to recover from the bolt of lightning which hit me as I walked down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan +++ an SMS from Uerzig in the Mosel told me that the Green Party of Rheinland Pfalz had caved in to Kurt Beck’s demand that construction of the monstrous Mosel Bridge continue in order to get into bed with him in a coalition government +++ they want us to believe that they had to do this (though they put up no fight at all), and they probably believe their own argument, but I don’t buy it +++ the truth is they were desperate for power and willing to do whatever it took, including a 180 degree turn on this issue +++ so Green political greed and opportunism sold the Mosel down the river +++ Shame on You Eveline Lemke !!! +++ given this spectacular u-turn in the direction of anti-enviromentalism and voodoo economics how can we believe any policy of the Green Party in the future ? +++ Renate Kunast, I think we urgently need an answer to that question ! +++ more on this issue during the coming days, also a big story on WEINHIER when it goes online at 18 hours Central European Time on Tuesday, 17th May

Upon returning to Berlin from many long and intense days of tasting the 2010 vintage German wines and I felt seriously confused +++ although there are plenty of good 2010s and some great wines, just what are the “typical” characteristics of the new vintage ? +++ when I tasted the sweet Riesling Spätlese from the Mosel at the Mainzer Weinbörse on Monday (many of which belong in the “great” category), there was a common thread of lightning-bright acidity and enormous aromatic intensity running through them +++ the Rheingau wines I tasted at the Weinbörse the day before also had plenty of acidity, but this often tasted aggressive and many of them were also rather thin +++ yesterday in Franken the dry Silvaner I tasted nearly all had a moderate to low acidity content, often tasting tasting positively creamy +++ that could be very pleasant, for example at Weingut Horst Sauer in Escherndorf, but some 2010 Franken Silvaner tasted like a big dollop of butter-cream, which I found too much +++ neither the successful 2010s, nor the unsuccessful wines conform to any sort of pattern +++ it’s a bizarre situation I never encountered before