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German Wine Country
Anna Marie Benton
German Wine Country: The Mosel, Ahr, and Franken Regions
 When
we think of German wine, we visualize a bone-dry German white or
perhaps a clear sweet Riesling to enjoy with dessert. Prized as
these wines are, they usually come with a hefty price tag. While
going to France or California to visit wineries and buy wine has
become a common vacation destination, buying wine in Germany has
its own rewards, and not just those of price. One can taste the
wine at the source, enjoy outlying attractions, and hike in the
picturesque German river valleys. Learning a bit of wine German
is also fun.
Nearly all the vineyards are in
the south of Germany on steep river valleys. The Romans brought
the vines to the Mosel and Ahr valleys, and they realized that the
valleys protected the grapes from the wind, and kept them warm,
as the sun hits the ripening vines perpendicularly with greater
heat.
Armed with this information and
my partner’s knowledge of enough German to buy wine, book
caravan sites, and order cakes at German bakeries, we took a self-directed
wine tour of the Ahr and Mosel valleys, including a side stop to
Franconia. We went in the latter part of September to take advantage
of the harvest season and small wine festivals in the villages.
Our first stop was the Ahr valley,
staying in the town of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler with its step slopes
and slate soil. This region surprisingly is known for red wines,
primarily Spätburgunders and Dornfelders sold in little stalls
on the street, marked Weinkauf (wine for sale). Though twenty years
ago German reds were pale and sweet, now they are in a class by
themselves, still delicate, but more tannic and with a complexity
of flavor that makes them perfect when a light red is required.
To buy wine at a stall is fairly
straightforward. After the usual pleasantries, it is usual to ask:
“Ich möchte weinprobieren, bitte.” (I would like
to taste wine please). It is also useful to be able to know the
terms for dry (trocken), sweet (lieblich) or half dry (halb trocken).
To request something dryer or sweeter, ask: Habensie etwes trockener
(do you have something dryer) or sußer (sweeter). Often you
will be given something that looks like a Chinese restaurant menu
with the varieties of wines numbered, indicating percentages of
acids, alcohols and sugars. I would usually ignore all this information
and splurge on the prize medal winners (look for kammerpreismunze);
with quite drinkable wines ranging at three or four euros, mid-range
prize winning wines at four to seven euros, and the most expensive
wines at 18 euros we could afford to be indulgent, requesting Zwolf
flaschen, bitte (twelve bottles, please)
 Bad
Neuenahr-Ahrweiler also is a lovely spa town, known for Apollinaris
table water “The Queen of the Waters” and for its casino.
Since we didn’t wish to gamble or mix our wine with our water,
we took a side trip to the Roman Villa, one of the best preserved
sites in northern Germany. A nearly intact bathhouse, remains of
a sliding window, a kitchen with chimney and stove, wall paintings
and mosaics, Roman glass, and a tile-factory are tastefully preserved.
As the tiles would be laid out to dry, children and animals would
walk over them and leave their marks; ancient cat and dog paw prints,
a squirrel, and a small toddler scampered over the still-wet clay.
When the children weren’t playing, they were being taught
to read; schoolboy graffiti reads “qui bene non didicet garrulus
esse solet” or “He who has not learned well becomes
a chatterbox.” And, more seriously, “scribtum me docuit
grati condelis habena” or “The whip of the cruel Grat(t)ius
has taught me reading.”
After stocking up on red wines and
Roman trivia, we decided to travel to the Mosel Valley the next
day to buy Riesling. Riesling is a cold-weather grape, giving it
a distinctive taste. In the late 1970s, German wine producers started
making dry Rieslings. Though their first attempts were a bit of
a hash, now they have many superb halbtrocken vintages on offer.
Other excellent wines from the Mosel come from Elbling and Kerner
grapes which have a very long ripening time, longer than for Bordeaux
or for Cabernet. And, we found we were not confined to sweet dessert
wines.
After all that wine tasting and our meals in the caravan, we decided
it was time to sample the local cuisine. During harvest time, amongst
all the usual schnitzel and products of pig, we decided to try the
Federweisser, a partially fermented very young wine with the yeast
often still intact, and Zwiebelkuchen, onion cake or tart. Federweisser
(Feder = feather, Weisser = whiter)looks like a slightly turbid
milk which is light and sweet, made after the annual grape harvest
from grape juice. As it is still completing fermentation, the bottles
have to remain open to avoid unintentional explosions (we learned
this the hard way). The composition of onion cake, other than the
onions, is variable from region to region. In Aachen it is more
of a quiche, in the Mosel a proper cake with bacon.
The version below is a good approximation:
Zweibelkuchen
(German Onion Pie Recipe)
4 thick slices of bacon, diced
2 cups peeled and chopped yellow onion
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream
1 tblsp flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 9-inch pie shell, unbaked
Preheat oven to 400 degrees farenheit
Saute bacon. Drain most of the fat from the pan. Add the onions
and saute
until clear. Do not brown. Set aside to cool.
Beat the eggs and sour cream together in a medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle
the
flour over the top and beat it in. Stir in the salt and pepper.
Prick the bottom of the pie shell several times with a fork. Spread
the
onions and bacon over the bottom of the pie shell. Pour the sour
cream
mixture over the top.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees farenheit and bake
for another 15
minutes or until pie is nicely browned. Serve hot!
To aid digestion of the onion tart,
a hike to Burg Eltz Castle is not to be missed. Spared from the
ravages of warfare, it has been within the Eltz family for 820 years,
and compared to most castles which were bare fortifications with
cold stone walls, it exudes cozy domesticity with tapestries, fresh
flowers, and ample flush toilets dating back several hundred years.
Life as a German princeling could be civilized. A tour includes
a gander at the treasure room of family silverware, drinking vessels,
and a remarkable ring made in 1730 which belonged to the Prince
Elector of the family. The Electors voted for the Holy Roman Emperor
and had to be fashion conscious when carrying out their official
duties, so the ring has 48 different removable stones to match the
wearer’s clothing of the day.
 On
our way to Würzburg, the capital of the Franken region, we
decided to make one last wine stop. Franken is 50 miles east of
the Rheingau centered upon the River Main. The wine there is distinctively
dry and peppery, designed to cut through rich German food, made
either out of the Silvaner grape, or a Scheurebe which is a cross
between a Riesling and a Silvaner. Distinctively bottled in the
squat green flasks called bocksbeutels, Franken wine is fairly difficult
to get outside of Germany, as winemaking is usually a sideline in
this region. It thus is in high demand, and a bit more expensive
than wines from the Mosel and Ahr, but a joy to drink.
One of the nicest towns to visit
in the Franken region is Sommerhäusen, south of Würzburg.
Home to the Tortumtheatre, goldsmiths, antique and craft shops,
it is a lovely place to wander. Winebuying here can be via stalls
on the streets during festivals, but more usually there are discreet
signs posted in front of private residences. On the Casparigasse,
we visited Hans and Betty Schmuck to buy Scheurebe. We were escorted
into their living room, and the wines were brought out and poured
for use to sample. Though Betty spoke no English, and I spoke no
German, and we rather stared at each other while my partner was
getting the car to load the cases of wine, I gestured towards the
folk tole paintings of flowers, grapes and wines on her door. She
made me understand she had painted them, and beamed when I told
her by gestures and smiles how beautiful they were. The wine was
superb too.
Places to visit:
1. Tourist Office Sommerhausen:
Telephone: ++49 - 9333-8256
Fax: ++49 - 9333-8256
verkehrsbuero@sommerhausen.de
Verkehrsverein Sommerhausen e.V.
Hauptstraße 15
97286 Sommerhausen/Germany
2. Hans Schmuck, Weinbau, Inh. Betty
Schmuck-Florio
Casparigasse 13, D-97286 Sommerhausen
Telefon (09333) 419 (5 S)
3. Burg Eltz Castle
http://www.burg-eltz.de/
Two hiking paths to Eltz castle begin in Moselkern and Karden. All
trains from either Koblenz or Trier stop here.
4. Tourism in the Ahr Valley:
http://www.ahrtaltourismus.de/
info@ahrtaltourismus.de
Roman Villa
Am Silberberg 1
53474 Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler
Telephone: +49 (0)26 41 / 53 11
Telefax: +49 (0)26 41 / 87-180
http://www.ahrtal.de/MuseumRoemervilla.htm
City map
Opening hours
Tu. – Fr. 10:00 AM – 18:00 PM, Sa., Su. and on holidays
10.00 AM – 17.00 PM
Closed from the middle of November until the end of March
About the Author
While she is not travel writing, Dr. Anna Marie Benton is a historian
of science and medicine and a research associate at the Wellcome
Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford University. An American
by birth, she has studied European culture and history and traveled
extensively in the US, UK and Continental Europe. Dr. Roos-Benton
welcomes the opportunity to write more tales of her adventures.
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