Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

This week it’s another regional study in wines! We bring you wines from the country that brought us Arnold Schwartzenegger, and the wines from the country that most people think he is from. It’s the country that gave birth to the Van Trapp family from Sound of Music fame, and the country they escaped into (and subsequently sold their story for $500, never to see a dime for the millions of dollars that the Sound of Music made). It’s the country famous for its rieslings and the country famous for selling its rieslings to the country famous for its rieslings. Yes, it’s Germany and Austria!

Why do I put the two together? Besides the two countries being neighbors, and similar wine styles, featuring both regions allows a broader range of wines. Besides, let’s face it. . .although Germany makes a good deal of red wine, very little is actually shipped to the U.S., so the majority of the wines available here are Riesling. Don’t get me wrong, here. Riesling can be a wonderful wine, and nobody does it better than the Germans and Austrians. The colder climates encourages the growth of the varietal, and they’ve been perfecting it for years. It would be easy to put together an all Riesling tasting. So I won’t. As always, I’m interested in the more esoteric and less common side of wine. What kinds of reds are there in Germany and Austria? This tasting is dedicated to examining a more full spectrum of German and Austrian wine.

There are a handfull of different red wine grapes in the two regions. The main one in Germany is Pinot Noir, with which we’re all pretty familliar. Austria has quite a few interesting ones, two of which I will be pouring here tomorrow: Zweigelt, a hybrid grape created by a scientist named. . .well.. .Zweigelt, and Blaufrankisch, which is known in Germany as Lemberger. . .not to be confused with the famously aromatic cheese Limberger. The wine and the cheese may go together pretty well, although I haven’t tried it. I’d be more than happy to try it should one of you bring it to the tasting. Then your stinky cheese can sit outside.

For important and intersting information about the German and Austrian wine laws shaping this tasting, follow the asterisks to the bottom of the letter. Yes, I wrote even MORE! ***

So Friday, August 6th, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Germany and Austria!
Schmitges 2002 Riesling Trocken (Dry) Qualitatswein, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany
Johannishof 2002 “V” Riesling Kabinett, Rheingau, Germany
P.J. Valkenberg 2002 Gewurztraminer, Pfalz, Germany
Hopler 2000 Zweigelt, Burgenland, Austria
Graf Trauttmannsdorff 2001 Parc Classic Cuvee (Blaufrankisch/Zweigelt), Burgenland, Austria

The Extra-Special Premium Pours:
Heger 2002 Pinot Noir, Baden, Germany
Felsner 2002 Gruner Veltliner, Alte Reben, Austria

Next week is Reds and Whites of South Africa!
M

***
One thing to understand about German wines are the wine laws, which follow a pretty strict schedule of when the grapes are harvested. If the grapes are harvested later, the grapes are potentially riper, and therefore have a higher sugar concentration. So on a scale of Early Harvest through Rotten Grape Harvest, the categories are: Tafelwein, Landwein, Qualitatswein (QbA), Kabinett, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein and Trockenbeerenauslese. Confused? Me too. Imagine then the sliding price scale of these wines being multiplied by about 1.5 per step up the scale. Which, yes, places the Trockenbeerenauslese in the $20-Per-Drop range. (Average price $500 for a half-bottle). The laws get even more confusing than that, but I’ve bored you enough.

Austrian wines are similar to German wine laws, as the Austrian wine industry was geared primarily for the German market, but had gone even stricter after the Anti-Freeze scandal of 1985. That was the year certain Austrian wine producers added Diethylene Glycol to their wines as an artificial sweetener. Someone in the worldwine media made a mistake and had the whole world accusing the winemakers of using Ethylene Glycol (a.k.a. – Automotive Antifreeze). Diethylene Glycol was actually less poisonous than the alcohol intrinsic to wine, and adding it actually made the wines in question “safer”. This fact didn’t keep people from flying off the handle, and now there is a funny episode of The Simpsons based on this theme. Episode 011, Season One. “The Crepes of Wrath.”