A Layman Exploring Wine 22

by William Powell

The City of Grand Townhouses Has Disappeared

Before Hanau's few flag-waving patriots can point to the Brothers Grimm, von Grimmelshausen or even Rudi Völler, let me say this: there are surely cities far uglier, duller and stranger than Hanau. In Chemnitz, for example, you supposedly would not even want to be found dead hanging over a garden fence, and Mönchengladbach is said not to look promising even in the rear-view mirror. But I have never lived in either of those places—in Hanau, I have. And of course I also know that Hanau must once have been a beauty before the war. With a wonderful old town and grand townhouses rising majestically around central squares. It was probably like that. I was not there, after all.

Hanau Is Coming Along

When I lived there, Hanau was a disfigured provincial town with all the charm of a litter tray. Even though much has changed since then, and even though Hanau's outskirts (like those of many other such battered pearls) do have some lovely, even romantic corners, that image somehow sticks. And that shapes your expectations of such a sorry place ... mine, at least ... until now, at least .... well—I will not make any guarantees for Hoyerswerda, Mannheim or Völklingen, but my expectations of Hanau have definitely risen considerably.

The Daily Chaos

It all began on a Thursday evening that started nicely, continued in style and ended magnificently. The best of all wives and I had managed to carve out an evening off and decided to spend this newly won time in an extremely traditional—indeed, almost clichéd—fashion. Although for months we had had no idea what films were showing, were hip or were must-sees, we wanted to pay an enthusiastic visit to the cinema complex in Hanau and watch something. It did not matter in the slightest whether it was a mindless “shooting film” (a wonderful expression of my wife's) or some barely tolerable arty crap with a pompously moral message, as long as it ran without the interruptions that an evening in the main house back home regularly has in store for us: “Daddy—I need a wee!”—“Mummy—I think there's a wolf in my room!”—“Why are you allowed to watch television and I'm not? Why?!!”

The Little Shop with Oil

We settled on the Florence Foster Jenkins story, and since we still had almost 90 minutes until the next screening, we thought we would go and get something to eat before the film. So we strolled from the cinema towards what people with a decidedly euphemistic outlook call a town centre, looking for a suitable restaurant. Taken by surprise by these unexpected moments together, we became a little engrossed in conversation and soon found ourselves in a poorly lit side street that did not look particularly promising on the dining front. Light spilled onto the street from just one tiny shop, and a closer look revealed that it was a small, rather grubby-looking Italian grocery. In one of the windows, dusty bottles of olive oil and large tins of pickled vegetables were stacked up. 

The Much-Praised House Wine

The second window made it quite clear that the shop had probably once been a hairdressing salon (a washbasin sheepishly forgotten in a corner was something of a giveaway), and offered a view of an improvised counter and two wobbly plastic tables with matching chairs beneath a few scratched fluorescent tubes. Nothing I would call a restaurant, a pub or anything of the sort. Not even the words bistro, canteen or dive came to mind at the sight of those plastic seats. I know bus stops that are more inviting. Fearless as ever, my wife grabbed my hand, made straight for the entrance and announced: “We should give this place a try!” What can I say—the broadly grinning Italian granny who greeted us fuelled my suspicions just as much as the limping server who poured us the house wine, or the burly-looking men playing cards in a side room and sizing us up through the gap in the half-closed door. I ordered the homemade ravioli (“only just made them—honestly”), and the wife got the last portion of the day's recommendation: risotto. 

The wine was pleasant but nothing special—a decent Pinot Gris from the Pfalz—a touch too warm for my taste, and it did not exactly raise my hopes for what was still to come. Shortly before the food arrived, the shop surprised me for the first time. The grinning granny came over again and recommended a different wine from the one in our glasses to accompany the meal. She had a very lovely drop from Friuli, the home of her late husband (“God rest his soul”), which would go beautifully with our choice of food. I was still hoping to furrow my brow a little in an expert fashion and coyly demur, but the irrepressibly high-spirited Amazon who married me immediately cried: “Of course—that's a brilliant idea!”. 

Granny and Her Ravioli

And so Granny opened a bottle of Ribolla Gialla from Collio while our evening meal was set before us on slightly chipped plates. From that moment on, everything changed. The food was—to put it mildly—otherworldly, fantastically delicious, and the wine went so well with it that I had to restrain myself from pouring it straight onto the plate and simply resting my face in it for the rest of the evening. I like eating and I like eating well, but it had been a long time since I had been as bowled over as I was on those cheap plastic chairs under that merciless artificial light. Incredible! The ravioli were perfect, filled with fresh spinach leaves whose flavour came through clearly and which caressed a trout I would have married on the spot, had that been possible. Alongside it, a white wine rolled across my tongue that was incredibly dry, yet had a feather-light, lemon-fresh fruit note and, right at the end, somehow recalled honey. Incredible, incredible, incredible! 

I spent the rest of the evening in a mild trance, enjoying a slice of chocolate tart with a seductive red called Schioppettino and some very funny stories from the lads in the next room. Of course, we never saw the film, but we do not care ... because that is the perfect excuse to make another pilgrimage to Hanau soon—that pearl among urban scarecrows.