Hessen's Bergstrasse

Let’s jump straight to Hessen’s Bergstrasse. The Romans introduced grapes here and called the region between the Rhein and Odenwald ‘Strata Montana’ – Mountain Route. Actually more hills than mountains the Bergstrasse runs North-South between Darmstadt and Heidelberg on the east side of the Rhine.

The Bergstrasse, is often referred to as the German Riviera and, along with the shores of Lake Constance (Bodensee), gets the most sunshine in Germany. The Bergstrasse is the smallest wine region in Germany and therefore comparatively unknown. But it produces excellent wines and, with the advance of Global Warming, now produces some splendid reds.

Riesling
My favourite is Riesling from Schönberger Herrenwingert. The winegrowing region of Mainz took over 2 hectares in 1923 from the counts of Erbach-Schönberg. Since 1953 the vineyard, now 11 hectares, has been solely owned by the Bensheim State Vineyard (Bensheimer Staatsweingut). It now grows 60% Riesling and the rest is Müller-Thurgau and Weißburgunder. (More about grape varieties in a later posting – and how to pronounce those umlauts!). The wine is fruity and racy (Rassig in German). It has a distinctive acidity which delivers a lusty, steely wine.

Recipe
Try this starter recipe with a young, chilled Herrenwingert.

Ingredients: Cream Goat’s Cheese, tin of apricots, salt, pepper, sprigs of rosemary, an untreated (bio) lemon, clove of garlic, fresh ginger, olive oil (2 tablespoons), sugar.

Warm the oil and the sugar together. Drain and dice the apricots and add them. Season with salt and pepper. Add the whole, pealed garlic and a similar sized cube of fresh ginger. Add the juice of half a lemon. Let the whole mixture caramelise. Remove the garlic and ginger. Add lemon peal zest.

Let it cool and fill into serving glasses. Mix the the cheese to a creamy consistancy and add a dollop on to each serving. Decorate with rosemary.

Guten Appetit.

German Speaking Wine Regions

The wine regions I want to help you discover are what I call, roughly, the German speaking areas – Alsace, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italian Tirol. Yes, you get further speaking the local German dialect in Alsace and Tirol than French or Italian.

The Secret
Why are their wines so little known? Because the wine is excellent, inexpensive and just enough is produced for the locals to drink it all themselves.

Wine is for Drinking
The Anglo-Saxon countries have the wrong approach to wine, they only sip it with meals – not entirely wrong but wine is for DRINKING! My local wine pub serves wine in standard 0.25 litre glasses, that’s over half a pint. (It has only recently, reluctantly, after 160 years, started serving bottled beer – please specify when ordering if you want one out of the fridge!). The wines I will feature are delicious, very drinkable, inexpensive (how about 8 Euro a litre for a superb Riesling) and I guarantee it does not leave a hangover nor give you indigestion.

Women and Wine
Wine is not only very healthy, but women prefer it to beer because it is lighter, tastier, has tremendous variety and the atmosphere in a cosy wine pub is so more 'gemuetlich' than a Bierhall.