Mark your calendar now for our "Rieslings 'round the World" Riesling Blind Tasting, led by our own Carl Brandhorst.  The evening's tasting takes place in the Harbour Square Club Room. The address for our tasting is 500 N St SW, Washington, DC. 20024-4605. Parking is available on the street and in the complex on a first-come-first-served basis.

The date is Friday, November 4th, starting at 7:30 PM.  The price will be $35 for members and $42 for non-members.

At this tasting, the German Wine Society will present a blind tasting of Rieslings from several countries around the world.  There will be ten wines in two flights, five wines to a flight.  There will be one German wine to satisfy those thinking that only German Rieslings are worth drinking.  In each flight, five wines will be poured for comparative tasting.   During the break between the flights, light hors d’oeuvres will be served. Only crackers and water will be available during the flights..

The session will be limited to 36 participants because the available wine is limited. After each flight participants will receive a list of the wines tasted. During the flights, sheets containing the modified Davis Scale, normally used in national wine judging events, will be provided so that participants can record their impressions based upon color, aroma, taste, finish and hedonistic impression.

The purpose of this educational tasting is to show that excellent Rieslings are produced in countries other than Germany, and for each participant to determine which of the wines he or she prefers.  In selecting the Rieslings for this presentation, the presenter tasted many Rieslings generally available in the Washington metropolitan area to see which ones met his criteria.  The criteria will be stated at the beginning of the presentation.

The deadline is Friday, October 31st.  Please send your reservation ASAP, so we can finalize planning. We are united in our love for German wines.  But the Riesling grape grows in many places and makes excellent wine outside of Germany. This is not an exercise to pick out the German wine, but to show the variation that the Riesling grape exhibits and to see if you like some of these different styles.

Join your German Wine Society friends and associates as we learn the challenges and considerations of combining our favorite wines with various cuisines. This meal promises to be a rare treat for the palate as shown by the menu and wines described below. In this Demonstration Dinner, we will observe Chef Ken, head chef at Open Kitchen, and his team prepare our dinner.  We will discuss the ingredient selection and assembly and ask questions as we observe their techniques and talents.  Finally, we will sample the wines and savor the foods, seeing how this complex set of decisions becomes a feast for our eyes, nose and palate.

Please join us Saturday, April 9, at 7 p.m., for our upcoming tasting with Daniel C. Hubbard of Domaine Select Wine Estates (DSWE). He has planned a power-point presentation to share with us his extensive knowledge of German wine.  As DSWE’s Central European portfolio manager and Mid-Atlantic sales manager, Daniel is well established with the German wine scene, as our board member Christian Schiller can attest.  They met at the 1st International Riesling Symposium last year at Schloss Reinhartshausen in the Rheingau.

The tasting will be at the Harbour Square Club Room.  As you will recall, this venue provides us a stunning view of the Washington skyline. The price for this tasting is $35 for members and $42 for non-members.

In 2010, DSWE was named Food & Wine magazine's Importer of the Year.  The German wine portfolio of DSWE is exquisite and diverse, containing, at one end, the Pfalz wines of Weingut Christmann, whose owner, Steffen Christmann, is the current VDP President, the organization of Germany’s elite winemakers, and at the other end, the wines of Dirk Wuertz, a young and upcoming German winemaker who sells his Rieslings as bag-in box wines at Whole Foods and New York’s trendy wine bar “The Ten Bells.”  It's one heck of a selection!  The wines have been selected.  They are four flights of three wines each, each flight representing a particular vintner.  The wines are:

Mark your calendars!

We have been invited to an exciting opportunity to enjoy the wines of the “other Mosel,” the Moselle River in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, at the beautiful setting of the Embassy of Luxembourg on March 18, 2011 at 6:30 p.m.   The price for the evening's tasting is $25 per participant.  This  amount will form our charitable donation, as requested by the Embassy in lieu of an event charge.

The deadline to submit reservations for this event is March 14, 2011.  The Embassy of Luxembourg is able to accommodate a maximum of 40 guests.  As this event is expected to be quite popular, please send your check promptly with your reservation.  Also, please bring identification for admission to the Embassy.

About Luxembourg Winemaking:

Luxembourg has a 2000-year history of wine-making, but its wine production is not large and  exports are mainly to Belgium and Germany, so this tasting affords a unique chance to try a variety of wines from Luxembourg in the United States.  In addition to sharing a great wine-producing region with Germany (Luxembourg’s vineyards in the Moselle valley adjoin Germany’s Upper Mosel), most of the grapes grown in Luxembourg are also found in Germany, including the noble Riesling, Pinot Gris (Ruländer), Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder), Gewürztraminer, Auxerrois, Mueller-Thurgau, and Elbling.   However, most of the wines of Luxembourg are drier than those produced in Germany, and the classification system varies considerably from the one familiar to German wine-lovers, so this should be a very interesting experience in learning about the different ways that one of Germany’s neighbors can produce fine wines using the same grapes and river valley as our familiar German Mosel wines.   The Ambassador of Luxembourg, Jean-Paul Senninger, who is from Luxembourg’s wine-growing region, will present the wines personally, and there will also be a presentation on wine-making in Luxembourg.

About the Evening:

The four principal types of wines that will be available come from one of Luxembourg’s largest producers, Bernard-Massard, and its Clos des Rochers estate.  These include Clos des Rochers Riesling, Clos des Rochers Pinot Gris, and Clos des Rochers Auxerrois, as well as a Bernard-Massard Cuvee de l’Ecusson Cremant, Luxembourg’s well-known sparkling wine.  In addition, the Embassy plans to offer some wines for tasting from its private stock, produced by the State-owned wine institute’s own vineyards and not available for sale to the general public, likely including a Gewürztraminer.  Through the evening, the Embassy will be serving light refreshments artfully prepared by its chef.