Welcome to Wine Country

Our first task of the evening when we arrived at the winery of Vogt-Fehlinger was to unpack and settle into the "apartment" that would be our headquarters for the next five days.  The place consisted of a master bedroom with bath (Jo and Annette's room), a second bedroom with its own shower and sink, a kitchen, an additional bathroom (no shower), and a spacious living room.  It was the perfect setup.  If you click on the link and look at the graphic of the building grounds, our apartment is the upper level of the right-most branch of the building. 

Here we are in the living room.

After everyone was settled and we had caught up with Jo, who had been on a work trip, we headed out for the event of the evening:  a wine tasting.  Funnily enough, it was a wine tasting at another winery just up the road.  We happened to be in town for this special bi-annual event and Annette's nephew, who had connections, had been able to procure tickets for the four of us.

The Johanninger Winery, which is bigger than Vogt-Fehlinger's, had a very chic "open cellar" day.  They had more than twenty different kinds of wines to try -- red, white, sparkling wines, and liqueurs.  

Here are some of the whites.

Different kinds of liqueurs -- all very strong.

You could try as much or as little as you liked.  There were jugs for pouring out excess wine from your glass and bread to go along with the drink.

Jo, Annette, and nephew Stephen are talking with the man in charge of the winery - Markus Haas.

We were tickled to be at such an event.

Jo and Mike had similar likes and dislikes in terms of wine.  I guess I like things a little more sweet.

Here are two different red wines.  What's unique about these two in particular is that one (I don't recall which) is from the wine region on the north side of the Rhine River - Rheingau, while the other is from the region of the south side of the river - Rheinhessen.  Annette was very clear that drinking/enjoying wine from Rheingau was treachery. 

In addition to all of the wine, Johanninger's also had a wealth of different hors d'oeuvres in an adjoining room (actually their showroom for fancy outdoor Weber grills).  Everything smelled, looked, and tasted great.  They had someone manning a grill all evening making little pizzas.  There were lots of little fancy dishes.  Even tiny little desserts!

Here's a look at the spread when most of the food had already been snatched up by hungry wine-tasters.

Close up of a delicious pasta.

The Forelle, or trout dish was so yummy.  Along with the fish there were noodles and some sort of puree on top.

Amongst other sweets, they had mini crème brûlée.

A lovely pairing.

Mike's sitting down to his carpaccio dish and wine.

The goodness didn't end there.  They were also offering tours of their winery, cellars, and distillery.  Normally the tours are done in German, but they happened to have intern who was really excited to do a tour for English speakers.  Originally from Namibia (once German South-West Africa), he spoke English, German, Kaiserdeutsch (the dialect of German spoken in Namibia), and Afrikaans.   He had been studying and working at the winery for a few years.  Anyway, he was full of energy, useful since he had to do everything twice - once in German and once in English - and was extremely informative. 

This is where the grapes get crushed and fermented and then pressed again.  This is also where they add sugars or whatever else is necessary for the particular variety of wine to meet government standards.

Then we went down to the wine cellars where the wine ages for a long period of time.  The different barrels give the wine different qualities.

This particular room in the cellar has some barrels made of American oak.  The one at the end and in the center is one of the American oak, formed in the traditional European method of heating the wood over an open flame in order to shape it into a barrel (called barrique in German).  This particular barrel was also methodically burned on the inside, which is done to give the wine additional qualities.  He unstopped it so we could get a whiff of the wine inside.  The wine smell smokey and just like bacon!

We continued into the cellar where the bottles are kept.  There is a huge process that involves turning the bottles at slow intervals to get the yeast in the wine to the neck of the bottle.

From here, we went to see their distillery as well as their corking facility.  He explained the process of distilling liqueurs and the difficulties of corking sparkling wine, especially when you have small thumbs that can't close up the opening once its opened to let out the yeast.  

At this point, everyone but Mike and I had lost interest or had to leave because the tour was getting so long.  Really, he was incredibly thorough and very informative.  Since Mike and I had stuck with him for so long, he decided to show us the winery's "Schatzkeller" (treasure trove) of wines.  It was a special cellar that held a few select bottles from each year the winery had been open.  Some of these vintage wines are so old that the original labels have rotted away.  To be sure of what is in the shelves, they came up with an elaborate catalog system for the bottles, including pictures of how many bottles are where and so on. 

At the end, I took a picture of Mike and our wonderful guide (we never really caught his name -- it was something rather difficult to pronounce) near a bottle of wine from the year 1984.

It was a fantastic evening full of good food, wine, and company -- the perfect beginning to a week of traveling the Rhine Valley.