New York Riesling Diary: Day 5 Meet the Riesling A Team

Here they are at Terroir Murray Hill at the end of yesterday’s launch of BEST WHITE WINE ON EARTH (aka #BWWOE), the Riesling A Team. As you can see, there were some surprise additions to the advertised line up, from left to right Steffen Christmann from the Christmann estate in the Pfalz, Fred Merwarth from Hermann J. Wiemer in the FLX of Upstate New York, Bob Betheau of Chateau Ste. Michelle & Eroica in Washington State, Ernst Loosen of Dr. Loosen in the Mosel and Eroica in Washington State, (that’s me behind him, of course, but I’m no winemaker), Sean O’Keefe of Chateau Grand Traverse on the OMP in Michigan, Philipp Wittmann of the Wittmann estate in Rheinhessen, Dr. Carl von Schubert of Maximin Grünhaus in the Ruwer (a tiny sub-region of the Mosel), Jochen Becker-Köhn of Robert Weil in the Rheingau, behind him Chris Williams and on the far right Janie Heuck Brooks both of Brooks in Oregon. Unfortunately, Oliver Haag of the Fritz Haag estate on the Mosel had to dash to JFK for a flight and couldn’t be in the picture. Obviously, some of them are a little distracted by the FIFA World Cup football match between Ghana and Germany that was screened during our event. Although the tasting was no competition, I would say that Germany showed better yesterday at our tasting than on the soccer field, and the USA team will have to be on top form to match the performance of their leading Riesling producers yesterday afternoon.

There are still a couple of places left at this afternoon’s dry Riesling ‘GG’ (the new category of hi-end single-vineyard wines) seminar. It takes place at Hotel Delmano, 82 Berry Street in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn (just a couple of blocks from the Bedford Avenue station on the L subway line). Anyone seriously interested should turn up there at 2pm and announce their intention of coming by sending an email to alexthealan@gmail.com beforehand. See you there!