Inheriting a proud tradition

Oct 16 2009 by Helen Savage, The Journal

ANNEGRET Reh-Gartner runs the historic German winery of Reichsgraf Von Kesselstatt, which her father bought in 1978.

It owns some of the very finest vineyards on the Mosel and its tributaries, the Saar and the Ruwer. Only Riesling is planted – and it is magnificent.

Given that Annegret has inherited such a proud estate, one that can boast over 650 years of winemaking, I wrongly imagined that she might be just a little detached and aloof. But she greeted me warmly, immediately put me at my ease, and launched into a detailed analysis of the place of German wine in the world market. She’s passionate and enormously engaging. I learned a lot.

We met at Jesmond Dene House in Newcastle where she’d come as special guest at one of their regular winemaker dinners, organised with local wine merchant, Michael Jobling. And so we began by talking about the food they were going to enjoy and what wines she’d brought to partner it. Food as well as wine is clearly another of her enthusiasms. She even married a chef.

“Riesling is wonderful with food,” she stressed. Even, apparently, with kippers, which were set to star in the first course. She suggested a fairly sweet 2006 Kabinett – my wine of the week.

“The saltier the dish, the sweeter the wine,“ she said. An even sweeter wine, a 2006 Spätlese, had been chosen to match a blue cheese and Stinking Bishop. I’m sure it turned out fine. Sweet white wine is almost always the best choice with cheese.

All four of the wines on show that night were, to a lesser or greater degree, sweet, including a 2001 Spätlese, with the main course of guinea fowl. I asked why. “Oh I’m fighting like crazy to sell dry wine here,” she protested, but she has not been able to persuade her UK agents to import any.

She told me that on her travels up through the country she’d met a man who declared, “Why should I drink dry wine from Germany, when I can buy it from other places? German wine is sweet.”

I share her despair. The silly man doesn’t know what he’s missing, and that, I’m afraid goes for too many of us. Back home, Annegret sells more dry wine than sweet. “Dry wine doesn’t burden the palate,” she argues, and rightly points out that many dry German wines with their slightly lower alcohol are just the kind of wines, that in these days of over-alcoholic monsters, ought to appeal more.