Moselland, Dornfelder "Avantgarde", 2010

torsten — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 08:41:53 +0000

There is no German wine that pairs with chocolate - this is what I have been told at a recent event on matching German wine with food. Whether you agree with this statement depends on what type of wine you would pair with chocolate of course. If you are amongst those who believe that sweeter red wines might work, well, then that statement is wrong. After all not only is about 40% of all wine made in Germany red, some of these do come in sweeter style too.

"Avantgarde", a semi-sweet Mosel red wine in an, er, avantgardistically shaped bottle is one of them. It is also a wine I have been scared of for a long time.

Moselland, Riesling feinherb 'Goldschild', 2010

torsten — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:22:15 +0000

Moselland, Riesling feinherb 'Goldschild', 2010

"The law made me do it!" is probably one of the excuses judges don't hear very often. If it comes to German wine, however, it may be more common than you think. The infamous German Wine Law, in combination with the regional wine establishment, is a very odd beast, so much so that you will find top producers who deliberately rate some of their top wines in a fairly low category as they don't quite meet inspectors' expectations. There are all sorts of complaints about the wine law of 1971, but it is still enforced with German precision. So much so that when winemakers wanted to print a new word on labels, "feinherb", they had to go to court as you cannot possibly print something on a label that has not been regulated beforehand.

Well, they succeeded and now we have a new, completely unregulated term in the precisely structured German wine classification: feinherb.

torsten Monday, 13/08/2012