A Novice Exploring Wine 1

by William Powell

I live with a constant paradox: I like wine and know nothing about it! Well, very little, at least. I know what I enjoy drinking, and according to Thomas Hensel (the winemaker I trust most), that is half the battle.

In the beginning, only hell was open

The trouble is, my wine education … if I can even call it that … began with the most dreadful plonk—and somehow I liked it back then, too—so my taste would seem to leave something to be desired. In my defence, I should point out that, when it comes to wine, I had about the worst possible start: my father was American and, until his dying day, considered Liebfrauenmilch in two-litre Tetra Paks to be nectar and ambrosia.

My mother also has two handicaps that should not be underestimated: she belongs to the generation that lived through the war, and she grew up in East Germany. “We had nothing, you know” was and still is such a guiding principle that making do simply comes with the territory. For my mother, anything sold in a Bocksbeutel bottle is “good wine”—sometimes she apparently buys real gems, and sometimes … she doesn't!

Clueless in wine country

Unfortunately, growing up in a genuine winegrowing region did not help either—the only thing I associate with our village's old vineyard is the daredevil sledging we did on its wintry slopes as children to prove our courage. So wine meant little to me at first, and my earliest encounters with alcohol came in the shape of enormous boot-shaped tankards, which the landlord of our club pub filled with shandy after home victories by our under-15 handball team. I have no idea whether anything like that would still happen today—in the early eighties, most adults around us thought little of getting fourteen-year-olds drunk.

Bella Italia

Still, I did not give up, and continued to devote myself to the fruit of the vine … or should I say wine-based products? Whatever it was, it was not good, because, like many teenagers—and I have since managed to coax this confession out of quite a few people—the first wine that made me say, wholeheartedly, “I like this!” was a cheap Lambrusco from a 1.5-litre bottle. I was utterly enchanted by my discovery and accused my mother of knowing absolutely nothing about wine.

“These Italians,” I thought, as the fizzy rotgut was probably doing terrible things to my body, “they really know how to live.” At no point did I attribute the pounding headache and slight dizziness the next day to that dreadful stuff, which really has very little in common with good wine, and I felt—after all, I was sixteen—incredibly grown-up and worldly.

But I got through that phase too, and discovered … No—I'll save that revelation for the next instalment.

Incidentally, my current favourite wine is Riesling Steinberg trocken from Weingut Hensel's Aufwind collection … but since I am tasting a lot at the moment, that could change quickly.