We started the day with a quick stroll to take in some of the thermal baths in the center of town. This is perhaps the best know, the Kaiser Friedrich Bad.
Peter picked us up at our hotel in the late morning and we headed for the Nahe River, a tributary of the Rhein, and home to several of the best wineries in Germany–which is to say, some of the greatest white wine producers in the world. Anna wasn’t feeling well–done in, no doubt, after pulling out all the stops the night before–and had stayed home. Udo, who drives a cool little Ford camping van, met us at our first stop, the Kruger-Rumpf winery in the village of Münster-Sarmsheim, very near where the Nahe flows into the Rhein at Bingen. Here are Peter and Udo about to dive into our first tasting of the day.
The Nahe really isn’t on the tourist pathways, and even the most famous houses offer a low-key, friendly introduction to their wines. Our tasting was lead by a very nice, and exceptionally well informed young woman; we all learned a lot!
We started here by tasting their “estate wines,” made with fruit from young vines at a number of different sites. The Weissburgunder (pinot blanc) and Grauburgunder (pinto Grigio) were very pleasant, while the unbaked Chardonnay was something we could imagine drinking every day if it only cost 7 Euros, as it does here. The next level, village wines, were quite nice, and still reasonably priced. We particularly liked one of the grand crus (Große Gewächse), im Pettenberg, and bought a couple of bottles to bring home.
We bid Udo, who had a long drive ahead of him, a warm goodbye and urged him to come and see us…but he’s a dedicated anglophile, so I’m not holding my breath! The happy three drove on to our next stop, one of the greatest producers anywhere, Schäfer-Fröhlich. We were greeted at the winery in the tiny village of Bockenau by the winemaker himself, Tim Fröhlich, clad in shorts and hiking boots as he descended from a tractor. Like many of the best winemakers, Tim is a farmer first. He led us into a cozy tasting room, where his brother in law, Mats Genheimer, led us through the wines. The Kruger-Rumpf wines had been very fine, but these were in a different league. We again started with estate wines but moved quickly into the next level, the village wines. Two are on offer, one from largely slate soils and one from volcanic soils. Both of these are “baby grand crus,” made from the younger vines in the grand cru vineyards. By this time we were deep in conversation about all the aspects of the winery, and Mats very nicely poured five different grand cru wines for us, with detailed descriptions of how each vineyard differs. Heaven! Here is one of the grand cru vineyards, Stromberg.
And this is the flagship vineyard, Felseneck directly above the village of Bockenau.
We wanted to take home a couple of bottles of the grand crus we had tasted, but they weren’t in bottle yet. And the winery had almost nothing left of the previous vintage; Mats was able to find 4 bottles of the grand cru Felsenberg, which we split with Peter. It has become virtually impossible to buy the grand crus in America; they sell out before they arrive. Here, though, is Felsenberg.
I wish we had been a bit less focused on the wines and a bit more on the landscape: the Nahe valley is gorgeous, with deep wooded side valleys punctuated with steep vineyards. But we have no pictures to share!
We drove back to Mainz where Anna was waiting….with Kaffee und Kuchen, natch. We sat on their terrace while a thunderstorm passed by–our only rain of the entire trip. Everyone was beat, so we fetched some chow from the Golden Duck, the oldest eatery in town, where we’ve eaten a number of times over the years. One last round of Spargel…or so we thought.
Peter wouldn’t let us take the train, weighed down with wine as we were, so he dropped us at the hotel…and off to dreamland.