I was just reminded of an old wine travel memory today. I am in the middle of a store remodel and was setting the German wine section. Moving around bottles of Selbach-Oster and Dr. Thanisch reminded me of the travel to Germany years back. Not that many years, but certainly a lot of trips ago. We as a group would meet up with Johannes Selbach at the winery in Zeltingen and make the rounds visiting all of the top producers in this part of the Mosel. Each was an education in place and style, how the same grape, in the same soil and conditions, could create so many subtle differences in their wines—each wonderful, similar and different at the same time. I really enjoy German Riesling, especially from the slate covered hills of the Mosel... and most especially the Trocken and Halb-trocken wines. To be honest, I don’t remember all of the wines over the years, but what I do remember very clearly is the people. Each personality reflected in the wine. Sofia Thanisch at Dr. H. Thanisch, elegant and charming. I love the style of these wines. I also remember tasting with Ernst Loosen of Dr. Loosen, where both he and his wines are precise and focused.

Maybe most clearly I recall tasting with Manfred Prum at J. J. Prum. We would all sit in the parlor on 3 couches facing each other. Large rose bushes were located at the end of each couch. He would bring a wine (one of many, many wines on each visit) and inform us of its charms, then pour us a glass… not a sample, a glass. Then we would taste it, and the game would begin. We were accustomed to dumping the remainder out, but he supplied no dump buckets. He expected we would finish the wine, and when we did, he would leave to fetch the next wine. This could go on for a few hours. In the morning, we all learned quickly to sort of hide our glasses so he would think we were about done, then when he left, we would all, in unison, dump the half full glasses of delicious Riesling into the rose bushes. The rose bushes were very healthy, and the roses were very large!

At the end of these long days of Riesling, beer tastes pretty good! We would end up on the roof of Johannes’ house, where he has a grill, tables, chairs and recliners. Johannes would begin the hours long ritual of trotting out bottles of his wine first, then Bordeaux…then older wines and even older Rieslings. The food would begin with salads, onto fish and then sausages. Finally meats… many, many meats. Very late into the night this would last, until there was room for nothing else, not even a wafer thin mint.

Shayne Hebert, Central Florida wine supervisor. Follow me on Twitter @abcwineshayne