soil, grape, climate, vintner...
- TERROIR WINES FROM
GERMAN-SPEAKING REGIONS
WEINE, DIE VERZAUBERN (engl. SPELLBINDING WINES) presents carefully selected wines from the cold climate german speaking regions, for the time being from Germany and Austria. Delightful Estate Wines, excellent Village and Single Site Wines, a wide range of Grosse Gewächse (Grand Crus), aged Special Editions, all the way to wines, dry as well as sweet, that can well be called monumental!
Why is the focus here on the german speaking regions? What kind of wine is this, that speaks german? Does this have anything to do with language, or is it simply some common characteristics that unite the wines from Germany, Austria, Alsace, South Tyrol and yes, a small corner of Luxembourg? Is it the grapes, the climate or the stylistics? Also very interesting: can a wine from, say, New Zealand be called 'german speaking' in a broader sense?
Read more in the themes area WINE SPEAKS GERMAN!
That these wines are organic and vegan should be treated simply as background information - these wines and their producers are much too busy making great wines to derive their identity or worth from such terms, terms that are surely relevant, but not always 'cool' in all circles.
Read more in the themes areas ORGANIC & TERROIR and VEGAN WINES?!
For me, wine is as much a process as a product.
What brought me to wine in the first place was not only taste, but also my fascination for processes. My relationship with wine and how it develops is also in process.
Historically speaking, wine has always been in process over centuries and generations. In the vineyard, the cellar, the bottle, the glass or in our memories - always changing, never static. Each vintage narrates the story of the year in which it was created.
Even the climate is changing, changing the wine and demanding adaptation.
The vine goes through a process. Starting from the still unproductive young vine, through the first vintages, the roots penetrating deeper through layers of soil, each layer narrating its own story in the bottle. The special characteristics of each year, each lot of land, each step of the multi-step harvest - sometimes even each barrel - results in another wine.
A unique process takes place in each vintner-cellar until the wine is bottled. The time spent in the bottle is also a process. Depending upon whether a bottle is opened today, after a few years or decades, the same wine is always a different wine.
Even the opened bottle is in process. Soon after opening, after a while, after a few hours, on the next day...the same wine is always a different wine.
The enjoyment of wine is always a snapshot of the moment. To talk about wine as a constant therefore doesn't really make sense to me.
