Hi, everybody, and
welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s und Brian’s blog about wine, food,
culture, people, and places. I haven’t
made much of an effort to learn German while I’ve been here, but today is our
last day, so guten tag! Really, I have nothing at all against the
language, but learning to get around with a little travel French language was enough of
a challenge on one trip.
The adventure is winding
down. Our only appointment for the day
was a visit to Weingut S.A. Prüm late in the afternoon, so we organized our
things to pack up and just goofed off around Bernkastel.
Here and above are photos of
the main marktplatz (I did learn a
word or two). The architecture is
gorgeous and the surrounding steep vineyards give the place a breathtaking,
almost fairy tale appearance. I will
say, though, that Bernkastel is pretty thoroughly commercialized with all the
typical souvenir shops, gelato, etc. It
is a universal tourist language, I guess.
A more authentic experience of the Mosel is found in the nearby smaller
villages and towns, which is where we spent most of our time.
A close look at the
people in these pictures provides an interesting cultural observation. Most of the people walking around are our age
or retirement age … alt fahrts, you
might say. Look at the group of young
folks sitting on the bench in front of the shop in the center of the photo,
obviously bored. There were about a
dozen of them. I said to Mary they must
be on some sort of organized school trip, but I don’t think teenagers find old
churches, historical buildings, and vineyards very interesting. To be fair, we have seen many cyclists and
hikers who are fit and robust, but the average age of tourists here is
definitely older than what we see in Burgundy and elsewhere in France.
There is a wurst steh on a side street, a sausage
stand, what Americans would call a hot dog stand. I asked Frau Mary if that would be ok for
lunch and the reply was something along the lines of, “yeah, yeah, yeah!” It’s a walk-up and walk-away establishment,
enough room for four of five to stand at the narrow counter, no tables.
The selections are
sausages of various types along with sauces and fries, served on a paper
plate. Takes about 10 minutes … shut up
and eat, delicious.
The buns are not really
what we think of as a hot dog bun.
They’re more like a Kaiser roll.
Someone suggested we
should visit the Riesling Haus in Bernkastel, which is indeed a serious wine
shop and tasting bar. It is not jammed
with tourists and we enjoyed browsing.
The entire inventory is Riesling from the Mosel and other German regions
… amazing. I’ve never seen such a
selection of extremely high quality, premium, well-known Riesling. Considering the prices are so low in Germany,
I was hoping to bring home a case on the plane as luggage, but we couldn’t find
an appropriate shipping box.
We visited a wine bar across
the river called the Brückenkeller, which translates to “bridge cellar” because
it is located under the bridge.
The weather was a little
drizzly and when another couple departed, we grabbed their table under the
umbrella. The sign for apfelstrudel was a siren song for Mary.
On our last day in
Germany, she didn’t pass it up. Here it
is in all its glory with the vanilla sauce and whipped cream.
The final tasting
appointment of our trip was at Weingut S.A. Prüm in Wehlen, another of the
descendants of the Prüm family I described in the previous blog post. The Prüm family history in vineyards and wine
production dates back almost 900 years.
Sebastian Alois Prüm inherited one-seventh of the family business in
1911 and founded the S.A. Prüm estate.
Like many of the
producers we have visited, S.A. Prüm produces a variety of wines from many
vineyard sites in trocken, feinherb or halbtrocken, and sweet styles.
Our host, Lisa, tasted us through a dozen or more wines, beginning with
their rosé of Pinot Noir, which their list of wines describes as der perfekte Sommerwein … no translation
needed!
Here’s a photo of one of their wines, the Bernkasteler Lay Riesling Kabinett 2010. To quickly deconstruct the label, the village is Bernkastel, the vineyard is the Lay vineyard, the grape is Riesling, the ripeness level is kabinett, and the vintage year is 2010. Gutsabfüllung means estate bottled.
Like the wines of Weins-Prüm,
whom we visited yesterday and are practically next door, the wines of S.A. Prüm
show a similar definition of detail and balance, the vineyards and vintages
displaying subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences. Many of the same vineyards are sourced by
both producers, so similarities are definitely present, but slight differences
in expression can also be appreciated.
The cellar at S.A. Prüm combines old and new. They
still use these large old oak casks for a short duration in the time between
fermentation and bottling. A quick
interesting side note is that when the casks are not in use for wine
production, they are kept filled with water in order to keep the staves
expanded properly.
Here is the new. These are large temperature-controlled
stainless steel fermentation tanks.
Something I found
interesting is they have these very small stainless steel tanks of varying
sizes so they can separate fermenting juice from small, defined parcels of
vineyard in order to understand differences within vineyard sites.
Look at this magnum of
wine next to a standard bottle of Riesling.
Beautiful, isn’t it? That would
be perfect (perfekte) for dinner on
the terrace with a small group on a summer evening.
Here’s Lisa, our friendly host.
We enjoyed the Zeltinger
Hof so much a few days ago that we decided then and there to make a reservation
for our last evening. I described the
experience in the blog post from June 5 (posted June 26), so I won’t duplicate
all of that here. I will say that Mary
was delighted to enjoy a traditional German spätzle
(pronounced SCHPETZ-la) a sort of dumpling or egg noodle, which she said was
wonderful.
The wine for dinner was
this Reinhold Haart Goldtröpfchen Riesling Kabinett 2014. For those who have read all our posts, you
will recall that Johannes Haart at Reinhold Haart was the first Mosel producer
we visited. It was a fitting wine for
the occasion. We've developed a greater
appreciation for the wines of Reinhold Haart, especially after meeting Johannes
Haart at their estate. Like all of his
wines we’ve tasted, this kabinett had the same great balance between acidity
and fruit I’ve discussed several times when tasting wine. It was nicely aromatic of peach and
flowers. The palate had a delicate
texture and weight with freshness and cut with flavors of stone fruit, golden delicious
apple and a nice mineral quality.
Lovely.
That’s our post for
today. Thanks so much for reading us at Cépage et Cuisine. Here’s a photo of Zeltingen at sunset from
the other side of the Mosel, which captures perfectly the astonishing beauty
and serenity of the place. Our wine
adventure in Germany has come to an end.
We return tomorrow to the loving arms of home. We will post one more entry about returning
to Plymouth and reflecting on this year’s adventure in wine, food, culture,
people, places, geography … all of it.
So, in the meantime,
Cheers!
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