Karl-Heinz Datum
About 20 km northwest of the Apulian Lecce is the small town of Salice Salentino, whose name is known to many, mostly because of its dry red wine, mainly produced from Negroamaro. It has to be be mentioned that the Salice Salentino also is produced pink or white and not only as a cuvée, but also from a single grape variety. The Salice Salentino Aleatico is also available in a sweet version, as well as liqueur wine.
For a long time I have wanted to take a closer look at the numberous wines of the beverage market – there where I buy water, beer and whisky. Looking closer at these wines l hoped to find an interesting sweet wine among them. I found what I was looking for, the packaging and the bottle caught my attention, as did the name Ratafia, which reminded me more of Spain than of South Africa, from where it was packaged, on a winery with the French named Haute Cabrière by Takuan von Arnim obviously of german extraction and possibly a descendant of an author of the song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and finally it found his way into an Upper Bavarian beverage market.
The Moselle wine-growing region has six viticultural subareas (Cochem Castle {Terrassenmosel}, Bernkastel {Middle Mosel}, Saar, Ruwer, Upper Moselle, Moseltor). With 5,685 hectares, the Middle Mosel is its largest wine-growing area and at the same time the heart of the Moselle cultivation area. Many well-known vineyard locations can be found along the approximately 100 kilometers of the river, their steep slopes mostly on Devonian slate, which can be gray, blue or red. The grapes for the 2003 Riesling Auslese Piesporter Goldtröpfchen from the Grans-Fassian winery grow on a gray-blue slate soil, interspersed with quartz and minerals
Schilcher is the name given to the rosé-colored shimmering wine of western Styria, which is made from the red grape variety Blauer Wildbacher. From this variety mainly still wine is produced, only about 3% of the Blauer Wildbacher grapes harvested from more than 360 hectares are made into sparkling wine and even much less into red wine.
Hans had invited to a small menu, the seven courses of which were accompanied by many very good dry wines and two sweet wines from Domaine Zind Humbrecht.
The Schäfer-Fröhlich winery has been family-owned for over 200 years and is still a business in which the whole family contributes their work. In addition to the two monopoly vineyardss Stromberg and Felseneck in Bockenau, the Monzinger vineyards Frühlingsplätzchen, Halenberg and Kupfergrube as well as the Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg are managed.
My first encounter with the Jakob Schneider winery was enjoying its dry Riesling called Magnum. In consequence of this good experience I ordered a sample package of wine from the winery. The winery located on the wine growing region Nahe was founded in 1575 and has been family-owned ever since. Jakob Schneider Junior, who returned to his parents’ winery in 2007 after graduating from Geisenheim, is responsible for both the vineyard and the cellar work. Ten years later he was awarded Gault Millau as Aufsteiger des Jahres ( climber winemaker of the year) and currently has four Gault Millau grapes.
I made my first acquaintance with wines of the Winery oberGuess in May 2004 on a hike with Evi and Udo to the Remschnigg Alm. From their last stay, they brought me the Sauvignon Blanc Ried am Walts 2017 from the winery.
Martin always serves one Dönnhoff wine, and there were even two at the last invitation. Grilled tuna and monkfish were accompanied by a Riesling Tonschiefer 2018 and the Riesling Niederhäuser Herrmannshöhle Auslese Goldkapsel 2015 of the winery was an excellent match with Erika’s dessert, a vanilla cream with berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries).
Everyone has been talking about Kabinett in recent years, increasingly more so. This may be due above all to the fact that the mostly delicate, juicy wines show increasingly more character. Better sweet Kabinett wines from Riesling in particular show a perfect balance between fruit sweetness and high acidity. Even with Kabinett, which is the first tier in the series of top quality wines, grapes juice, must or sugar must not be added under any circumstances, like it is the case with all other types of German predicates wines. The minimum must weight for the Kabinett wines varies between 73 and 85 ° Oechsle depending on the wine-growing region and the grape variety, in the case of the tasted Mosel Riesling Kabinett 2018 from the winery Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt, it is 73 °.