Very cool, thanks for sharing Tom.
Trink seems to be a great publication.
Stefan Steinmetz has his Alter Satz 2019 on its way to me; iām excited to try itā¦
I am largely ignorant of the history of Northern European viniculture/viticulture. I found a few foreign-language websites that focus on promoting and preserving historically significant grape varieties. I hope that they are of interest.**
You may know the name of Ulrich Martin from the āHistorische Rebsortenā - wines made from varieties somehow snatched from extinction. Rebschule Martin is a leading Vine Nursery in Germany so they are in a good position to propagate cuttings from ancient varieties found growing up the walls of monasteries, on terrasses and so forth.
"Andreas Jung is the foremost grape archaeologist. He and Ulrich Martin have been working for 20 years to re-establish these grapes. All that would only be of academic interest if it wasnāt for the fact that Ulrich Martin is an exceptionally gifted winemaker.
"Indeed the four āHistorische Rebsortenā at the recent tasting of 57 varieties made only by one or a very few producers scored highly in Jancis Robinsonās tasting.
āSo in a year when we havenāt been able to get about as much as we would like, we have no hesitation in naming Ulrich Martin Slotovino Wine Personality of the Year. He would have deserved this award at any timeā¦ā.
Original Verkorkt (āOriginally Corkedā)
All articles by Andreas Jung
Visual Cues & Primary Sources vs Genetic Testing
āOld Vineyards - Old Grape Varieties: Insights into a Completely Different Winemaking Tradition, Part 1ā
by Andreas Jung
August 7, 2015 Editorās Note: "While Iām going on vacation, Iāll hand over the blog to Andreas Jung. He is one of the leading grape variety researchers, called ampelographers. I am increasingly fascinated by ampelography, recognizing grape varieties and, above all, their historical distribution. However, in a recent exchange with Andreas Jung, I had to realize that everything is much more complicated than I had imagined. Many statements made in the past about the naming and origin of grape varieties have to be called into question again and again.
"The next episodes are about old vineyards with old vine stocks, and Andreas Jung uses a few varieties to show how difficult it is to search for, identify, and compare with earlier statements.
āā¦You can support the work of Andreas Jung. He builds up a living archive with old grape varieties. How about a vine sponsorship? This helps Andreas to continue his laborious and expensive work. It also means that grape varieties can be preserved that would otherwise die out, along with many others. Anyone who wants to support the preservation of varieties in grape variety archives can do so through grape variety sponsorships: www.rebenpatenschaft.de . If you want to start growing old varieties again, you can find out more here: www.historische-rebsorten.de .ā
Past Issues of Confused Identities
Uncovering Surviving Examples of Historic Viticulture
āOld Vineyards - Old Grape Varieties: Insights into a Completely Different Winemaking Tradition, Part 4ā
by Andreas Jung
August 24, 2015
āā¦In my personal responsibility for the wine-cultural heritage, I have made it my task to preserve the old varieties and clones in private grape variety archives on my own initiative. I have now collected around 280 historical varieties and more than 1,400 autochthonous clones of old varieties without any government help and planted them on more than 2.5 hectares with the support of private wineries and nurseries and the benevolent support of the approval authoritiesā¦ā.
Southern Palatinate Region website SĆ¼dpfalzweinberg Grape Variety Archive
Vine Sponsorship:
Thank you Drew and Tom for sharing all of these links. German wine and esoteric varieties are two of my interests, so I look forward to reading all of these.
Robert, if you have a source for the Steinmetz Alter Satz, please PM me. I really like the Steinmetz wines, and this is way too up my alley.
On the one hand, I really love some of the old field blends in California like the wines Ridge makes from Lytton Springs and Geyserville. I think the wines are more complex than they would be if made from one variety like Zinfandel.
Also, I am very sympathetic to the notion that the entire world does not need to be planted in varieties like Chardonnay.
But, on the other hand, I love Riesling and I would hate to see top vineyards in Germany planted in varieties other than Riesling. This is one of the worldās most noble grapes and IMHO it reaches its heights in German vineyards.
So, I guess where I come out is that replacing things like Muller-Thurgau or Chardonnay with old German Varieties probably is neat but replacing Riesling from top vineyards, not so much. There is IMHO already too many producers trying to make Riesling into dry Chardonnay look alikes and away from the unique wines that Germany makes better than any place in the world.
Any idea if Lyle ships to MA now? As of several months ago, he still did not, which was surprising - not to mention itās the only reason I havenāt signed up for his emails.
Most of the Fass Selctions wines Iāve bought came from WineBid.