What happened here? Last post more than 2 years ago? That needs to change.
For years I have been concentrating on wine countries as New Zealand, South America or California but recently I have started to look at wines from my home country again, where unbeknownst to the rest of the world a small revolution has taken place for some time now. I know German wine has a (well-deserved) bad reputation in most of the world and the old, horrible stuff is still being made. But in recent years there has been a kind of "revolution of the young ones" with many innovative and energetic approaches to modern wine-making. It's almost a bit like what happened in California - minus most of the crazyness.
Firstly a Pinot Blanc, a Riesling, a Pino Noir Ros?, a red blend, a Muscat and Sauvignan Blanc:
They originate from a winery that's being lead in the 5th generation and who's current young owners decided to break with tradition and give their wines fancy names as a trademark. They invested heavily in modern machinery and wooden barrels to produce their current product line. I bought them in this "discovery pack" as a set for 50 Euros and all those wines are very recommendable. I very much like their approach on wine drinking and the names on the labels speak for themselves
Furthermore I have been buying this Riesling for some time and it's in my opinion up there with the best whites on the market:
"Deep Roots" has become my standard white wine for all occasions. It's made by three young wine-makers who call themselves "3 Winner". It isn't quite as good as my favourite white wine, though (Cloudy Bay Sauvignan Blanc, which is more fruity and less minerally) but hey, it's a bargain for roughly 10 Euros a bottle.
I admit I'm not a big fan of dry red wines. Maybe some day I will but at the moment I'm not.
However, I'm a sucker for really good sweet reds. My favourite of that sort, a Spanish blend called "Marca Alcantara", has recently gotten competition from another young German winery:
It's called "Die Freude teilen" (Sharing the joy) and is part of a product line called "Young Poets". I'm planning on buying a complete set of that product line in the nearer future.
All those wines I introduced, fulfill the James May exigence of being "good but inexpensive".
I also recently bought some award-winning Austrian wines but haven't gotten to open a bottle so far. I will report back in when I have.
P.S.: I'm very happy to report that more and more good wine-makers say goodbye to corks and use screw tops or - which I find very intersting - glass tops with a rubber ring that snap in place again, once you removed it.