President Obama spent a day in Berlin, Germany, last week - his first visit in Germany as President of the USA. The day ended with a formal dinner at Schloss Charlottenburg, where Barack and Michelle Obama got the chance to taste the excellent cuisine of 2 star Michelin Chef Tim Raue and the 5 German wines he had selected. Tim Raue’s selection was a big surprise for the fans of German wine in the USA: No Kabinett, no Spaetlese, no Auslese, no Mosel wine among the selected wines – the wines that are so popular in the US! So, what wines did Chancelor Merkel serve President Obama and what wines did she not serve President Obama?
Michelle Obama must be a real connaisseur. Her face on the picture in your blogpost says it all .
Seriously, I’m so disappointed by the choice of wines for the Obamas. Markus Schneider’s wines are as bland as it gets and Dreissigacker’s are no better. Modern, boring, everybody’s darling and with nothing but hot air inside of them. Yet, Tim Raue (a great chef, I loved his cooking since his days at Restaurant 44) has been pushing Dreissigacker and Markus Schneider for a while now. Plus Jochen Dreissigacker and Markus Schneider seem well connected within the Berlin restaurant scene. For example, Thomas Kammeier of Hugos (the most consistently underperforming of all of Berlin’s one star restaurants with food that equals Dreissigacker’s and Schneider’s wines in blandness) was cooking at this year’s wine presentation at Dreissigacker. And both their wines seem omnipresent in the Berlin gastro scene.
If I was the US president and would be served these wines at a dinner, I’d come home and think that Germany was trying to be 2013, but only managed to be 1995.
no wines from the 2 wine regions in the eastern part of Germany, where Berlin is located: Saale Unstrut or Sachsen. Plus Merkel grew up in former GDR. Sachsen or Saale Unstrut would have been her wines.
StevenB,
Wines of 1995? The “new world style” wines Markus Schneider makes today did not exist in Germany 20 years ago. Similarly, the Kellers, Wittmanns, Spaniers, etc in Rheinhessen were just about to get going in 1995.
I think it was a smart choice.
What would you have served? A Raumland Sekt, Keller’s G-Max, a noble sweet from Egon Mueller and a Pinot Noir from Bernhard Huber?
What I meant was: Today, the wines Markus Schneider and Jochen Dreissigacker make are as “modern” as white leather sofa lounge areas, flatscreen TVs and Ibiza chill out music (i.e. the stuff that was “modern” in 1995). These guys may have had their 15 minutes with their fantasy name wines, but they’re already passé.
Something in that direction. That way, at least the wines would have been good.
Why was it a smart choice? Because Michelle O. looks like she’s thinking “Why do I have to drink this slurry. How much time until we leave?” while holding her glass?
Ronald Reagan was a fan of Beaulieu Vineyard. According to the local press, President Obama and his wife regularly go out for dinner and they have dined at some of Washington DC’s best restaurants, such as Komi and Restaurant Eve, to name two.
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