I mentioned Weingut Römer Hof was holding an underwater wine tasting in cooperation with Yeti Divers, Blickfang Werbung and the city of Traben-Trarbach as part of the Mosel Wein Nachts Markt. Yesterday the German Wine Queen, Annika Strebel, joined us at the table. A series of blind tastings took place with communication taking the form of a underwater writing slate and various hand signals. The tasters could determine varying residual sugar levels, grape varieties and vertical tastings. The 2006 Auslese from Trabener Würzgarten was a favourite.

Pre-Dive with the German Wine Queen.

Setting the table...

This won't hurt a bit...trust me!

Damn Hochwasser!

Yesterday, the local bread-baking team fired up the oven in my hometown, Starkenburg. The process lasts about 6 hours.
There’s something very comforting about being outside on a beautiful Autumn day with warm, crispy bread.

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mmm well, we were approached by a dive school in the region… Yeti-Divers. Werner Lamberti suggested we do the world’s first official underwater wine tasting as one of the events at the 2011 Mosel-Wein-Nachts-Markt. At first I was thinking, Werner, you’ve lost your marbles pal. We purchased some syringes, jumped in the local pool with our O2 bottles and worked our way through a couple of wines. First test: which wine has the most residual sugar? What is the variety (ok, if you got stuck here, process of elimination would probably encourage you to select Riesling)?

The experience was interesting. Never before, have I placed so much emphasis on the wine tasting-tools in my mouth. The public will be given the chance to participate. They will taste underwater and then out of the water (blind of course) comparing their results. Hopefully we get some consistent findings. I just hope the participants stay relaxed when I ask them to remove their regulators whilst approaching them with a syringe.

Just racked the last party of juice to tank and filtered the last portion of juice lees for 2011. Result: 41000 L, 25 different ferments from 17 different vineyard sites, 7 different yeast types, a bunch of wild ferments and a sparkling Willmes Press has been wheeled off into it’s dark corner until this time next year.

Making Riesling at the Mosel – my love for this place expands with every vintage. Haha, 41000L and 25 different ferments…classic. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve taken on the role of winemaker at Weingut Römer Hof in Traben-Tarbach at the Mosel. This is my first vintage with Römer Hof and I’m having a blast. With the help of our web designer we’ve put together a new website (which hasn’t reached full-maturity) and I’m stripping back the number of Riesling wines from a single vintage to just 3 or 4 labels (trust me this isn’t many at the Mosel). The labels themselves have just undergone a massive transformation, introducing some helpful, self-explanatory graphics, aiming to reduce the often misleading terminology found on a bottle of Mosel Riesling.

Back to the cellar: some serious blending trials (not widely practiced here) will take place next year to determine the different attributes from the 17 different vineyard sites. Like a cook in the kitchen with various ingredients, the goal is to use the various mesoclimates to give each of the 4 wines the character which best fits their style. Lets be honest, in terms of grape varieties, Mosel Riesling is the chameleon of wine style.

Munich is hosting a new breed of wine tasting on the 19th of November at the SkyLounge (Dingolfinger Strasse 7). Winevibes is all about presenting well-made, honest wines made by down to earth winemakers. Of course a party wouldn’t be complete without the influence of groovy tunes so no other than, Rainer Trueby, will be in charge of the sound waves. What an exciting time to be involved in the German wine scene.

The evening will kick off at 18:00 with a three hour ‘Chill-out-Tasting presenting 21 producers from Germany, Austria and Italy. Once warmed up vino-lovers will drift into a party session guided by the legendary Rainer Trueby, who will have us all gliding around the SkyLounge to his light-hearted beats.

Special guest, Finkus Bripp from Wineontherocks.tv will no doubt assist to create an atmosphere which we’re all craving in a modern-day wine tasting with comments like this:

“The way I see it is, good people make good wine and wine made by assholes tends to have like a….shitty aftertaste. But that’s a personal opinion.” I don’t know much about this guy, but I think I’m going to like him.

This is a difficult situation! Am I there to work or play?

A glass of Römer Hof Auslese sparked an idea last weekend. Good friends of ours were visiting from Australia. Sabine is a German chef living in Sydney with her gifted fiancé, Tim. The two of them are looking to open a restaurant in Sydney next year. If you have the Triple J app ‘Unearthed’ on your phone, ‘Tim Watkins’ is well worth a listen. Tim is also no slouch in the wine department. Tim and Sabine are on tour at the moment, tasting their way through Europe.

Whilst pairing some recipe ideas to various styles of Riesling on the weekend we found ourselves quickly standing in front of a warm pan of Auslese and sugar. The goal was to create a caramel using Auslese instead of water. The honeyed, acidic nature of Auslese provided an interesting edge to this simple treat used in the famous Creme Caramel. Give it a go sometime……..