Mosel Riesling 2016 – Fruity elegance

Bernkasteler vineyards (at the upper edge from the village from right to left: Doctor, Graben and Lay) © Pixabay

Maximilian Ferger‘s passion for wine becomes clear if listening to him, the enologist and manager of the renowned winery Wwe. H. Thanisch – Erben Mueller-Burggraef, when he is speaking about his work in the vineyards and in wine cellar.
Talking with him about Riesling and Pinot Noir on the phone, I had the impression that he speaks of the vines as his children. Just as you give children the best you can, in any case, he wants the best for his vines. In doing so, he pursues an ecologically oriented, sustainable path, which also includes the renunciation of herbicides and botryzides – a path that will soon be completed

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Tokaji – Hungary’s sweet miracles


Zoltan Sánta, member of the board of the Weinakademiker had brought with him mainly dry Hungarian wines to the tasting beginning of October in the Munich cork wine bar, but at least four sweet wines from Tokaj. There are 134 grape varieties in Hungary, but only six of them are approved for the production of sweet Tokaji: Furmint, Hárslevelû, Sárga Muskotály, Zéta, Kövérszőlõ and Kabar.

The vineyards in the Tokaj are predominantly on mineral soils of volcanic tufa, such as rhyolite, andesite or dacite, in lower layers with topsoils of clay, loam and loess. Yields are often just a few hectoliters per hectare. Most of the Botrytis … Read more ...

Are matured Trockenbeerenauslesen the better choice?

In other words: Are matured, ie older Trockenbeerenauslese better than those from younger vintages? Several reasons have led to this question, the most important is probably that I think the sugar content of Auslesen seems to be optimal. Another important reason is the fact that my wine friend Hans stores a lot of sweet wines, including many old TBAs in his wine cellar, from which we time by time we taste some. As a result of this fact, six of the eight TBAs discussed so far in the blog were 15 years or older. For me five of them met the criteria for an excellent wine.

Finally led to this … Read more ...

From the Solera – Catalonian sweet wine

Catalonia, currently in the news because its efforts of independence from Spain, is better known for cava as well as its red wines from the Priorat or Monsant. Sweet wines, which until the 1950s together with Cava held a leading role in Catalonia, are of minor importance nowadays, best known are still the sweet wines with untypical ageing notes, often varnish-like flavours, of the DO Terra Alta and the Garnatxa de l’Empordà. Sweet wines from the Tarragona wine region are now among the least known wines in Catalonia – until the 1960s, they were considered a low-cost alternatives to port wine. In Tarragona, the fortified strong sweet wines have always … Read more ...

Cream-Sherry: Oloroso plus sweetness

Cream means sweetened sherry, a category that also includes Pale Cream and Medium, is considered by quite a few sherry lovers as a purely commercial product. This may be true if Oloroso is sweetened by the addition of sweet or even cooked, concentrated grape must (Arrope). But that holds not true if of blending a dry sherry is done with a sweet sherry, such as PX (Pedro Ximénez) or Moscatel, as is the case with the three Cream Sherries, we have tasted.

The name Cream for this type of sweet sherry goes back to Harveys’ Bristol Cream, which introduced it in the 1860s … Read more ...

Majorca – Vi blanc dolç

Inselinneres von Mallorca

Majorca had more than 10 million visitors last year. The least of them probably drink Majorcan wine, because the amount produced there annually of about 6 million bottles would not be enough.

Only 10% of the area of ​​Majorca is planted with vines. 2,500 hectares of vineyards are spread over four wine growing areas. Almost two-thirds of the areas claim the Vino de la TierraMajorca and Serra de TramuntanaCosta Nord, the rest is shared by the higher quality DO (Denominación de Origen) Binissalem and the DO Pla i Llevant, located in the southeast.

Anyone who has already drunk Majorcan wine could have already made the acquaintance of one of the indigenous grape varieties of the Balearic Islands. Above all, these are the red varieties Manto Negro, Callet and the white variety Prensal, also called Moll.

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Trockenbeerenauslese from southern Styrian Opok

“Evi and I are going on vacation to southern Styria at the winery Tauss” my friend Udo told me. I, too, had been on vacation in the winery Tauss and bought wine there – the last, recently opened bottle of the red Traminer macerated and fermented on the grape skins in 2006 has been sensationally good. Only one sweet wine of Tauss was slumbering in the wine cellar, a 2002 Trockenbeerenauslese of Pinot Gris, in German named Grauburgunder. Already almost 10 years ago, during our nearly obligatory annual short holidays in southern Styria, we realized hat the wines of Roland Tauss are characterized more by secondary aromas … Read more ...

Sicilian Notissimo

The baroque splendor of Noto is known beyond the borders of Sicily. Less known, however, is the Moscato di Noto from the variety Moscato Bianco pressed. The variety is quite common in Italian sweet wines. The Moscato di Noto is often sweet – but it is also traded in a dry version. In the regulations of the DOC Noto the sweetness of the wine is not determined, only aromatic and varietal should the Moscato di Noto be.
Exactly to the letter of the DOC regulations, however, the other three variants of the Moscato di Noto must be. The Moscato di Noto Spumante must have more than 50 grams of residual … Read more ...

Swiss straw wine from the Rhine

From Ticino to Aargau our Swiss wine tour led us this year in June. We also got to know the Räuschling, an indigenous Swiss grape variety, of which only 25 hectares are cultivated worldwide, 18 hectares of which at Lake Zurich. The parents of the grape variety are the grape varieties White Heunisch, also known as Gouais Blanc or Gwäss as well as the vine named in the Jura Savagnin Blanc and in Switzerland Heida. Gouais Blanc, which is also a direct ancestor of Riesling, seems to provide for the very strong acid and therefore predestined this grape variety as very good for sweet … Read more ...

Dulce de Invierno – sweet wine from Rioja

The last wine tasted at Dinastía Vivanco, the tenth and last visited bodega in Rioja, was at the same time the first and only sweet wine of the entire Rioja wine journey in mid-May of this year. It was a sweet wine made from four of the five approved red grape varieties of the Rioja: Tempranillo (50%), Graciano (20%), Garnacha (20%) and Mazuelo (10%). A sweet wine made from this combination of grape varieties seems not gto be very common in the Rioja. Dinastía Vivanco, however, is not only known for its very extensive, extremely informative museum of wine culture, but also to follow new avenues in … Read more ...