In April of this year, the “Lange Nacht des Deutschen Weins” (Long Night of German Wine) took place for the 16th time in Berlin, Germany. The stars of the evening were Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer - 3 up-and-coming female winemakers from Mainz, Rheinhessen, who are also best friends.
Since 2011, there is also an American version of the Long Night of German Wine. This year, it took place on July 25 at Hearth Restaurant in the East Village of New York City. Again, Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer were the stars of the event. They came for less than a week to the US, mainly for that event. Unfortunately, my attempts to bring them over to our Summer of Riesling Party in the Nation’s Capital, Washington DC, a few days before the Long Night of German Wine in New York City did not succeed. I got wind of it too late and they had already booked their flights, when I contacted them. They arrived in the US the day following our party. What a pity! "We woild have loved to come to your Summer of Riesling Party" said Mirjam Schneider.
But I was able to meet up with them up in New York City for a glass of wine at Terroir at Murray Hill and to accompany them on the 31-days-of-German-Riesling New York Harbor Cruise. Unfortunately, I could not make it to the Long Night of German Wine, but Stuart Pigott reported extensively on his blog about the event.
Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider, Eva Vollmer
Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer are three young and gifted female winemakers from Rheinhessen in Germany. The three of them are at the beginning of a promising winemaker career, and they are best friends. They help each other and they spend a lot of time together.
I have met them individually several times and I met them together at last year’s wine festival at Weingut Eva Vollmer in Mainz, were they did an interesting Silvaner tasting. In addition, my daughter Katharina Schiller helps Mirjam Schneider during the harvest and wine festivals, and she has helped Christine Huff. Finally, Eva Vollmer is the Vice-President of the Mainzer Weinguilde, a wine brotherhood, of which I am a member.
Rheinhessen
Rheinhessen is an area that used to be known for winemakers often focusing on quantity and not quality. Rheinhessen is the largest viticultural region in Germany. Every fourth bottle of German wine comes from Rheinhessen. The high-yielder Mueller-Thurgau accounts for about 1/5 of the vineyards. Unlike in other German wine regions, where monoculture of the vine is the norm, here the many rolling hills are host to a wide variety of crops grown alongside the grape.
See also:
Ombiasy Wine Tours: Wine and Culture Tour to Germany Coming up in August 2013
Rheinhessen also has the rather dubious honor of being considered the birthplace of Liebfraumilch. At the same time, Rheinhessen is among Germany’s most interesting wine regions. A lot is happening there. This is not because of the terroir, but because of the people. There is an increasing group of mostly young and ambitious winemakers who want to produce and indeed do produce outstanding wine and not wines in large quantities. Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer are 3 of them.
Eva Vollmer and Weingut Eva Vollmer
Eva Vollmer is the 2010 Gault Millau Germany Wine Guide Discovery of the Year. She owns and operates - jointly with her husband Robert Wagner - a new Wine Estate in Rheinhessen in the outskirts of Mainz.
Pictures: Christian G.E. Schiller and Eva Vollmer at the Terroir Wine Bar (Murray Hill) in New York City and in Mainz
After studies in Geisenheim and an internship in California at William Hill and Atlas Peak, she founded the winery in 2007. She took over the vineyards of her father, who used to grow grapes only and sell them. Since then, she has not only produced outstanding wines, but also completed a Masters at the University of Giessen and recently a Doctorate at the University of Geisenheim.
The very first vintage in 2007 was Eva Vollmer’s big bang on the national wine stage. Only just under 5,000 bottles were filled from the first vintage. Weingut Eva Vollmer is in the process of moving to organic wine growing.
Eva Vollmer's Wines at the Long Night of German Wine, Weingut Eva Vollmer:
Riesling Trocken, 2012
Riesling Feinherb, 2012
Riesling Trocken, Niersteiner Pettenthal, 2011
Weissburgunder Trocken, 2012
I have published the following posting about Weingut Eva Vollmer:
Winemaker Eva Vollmer is Germany’s Discovery of the Year 2010
International Women's Day 2012: Meeting the Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer of Mainz, Germany
The 31-Days-of-German-Riesling Concert Cruise Around New York Harbor with the German Wine Queen Julia Bertram and the 3 Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Eva Vollmer and Mirjam Schneider from Mainz, Germany
Mirjam Schneider and Weingut Schneider
The Schneider Estate in Hechtsheim at the outskirts of Mainz looks back to a long winemaking tradition. Already since 1715 the Schneider family has grown and made wine. Mirjam Schneider, a young lady in her 20s is the 6th generation. She has split up the work with her father, Lothar Schneider, who looks after agriculture, while she is responsible for the viticulture and the wine making in the cellar. In the farm shop of the Schneiders, you will find both fresh fruits and vegetables and wines from Mirjam's cellar.
Mirjam Schneider says that she always wanted to become a winemaker. She did her formal education, went to New Zealand to get an international perspective and took over the winery in 2005. As many other winemakers, she is trying to push nature to the fore and chemistry to the back: “The focus of my work is dealing with nature - because wine is for me a valuable natural product. I therefore attach great importance not only to keeping the wine in the process as natural as possible, but to bring this understanding to the vineyard as well.”
Mirjam Schneider's Wines at the Long Night of German Wine, Weingut Schneider:
Riesling Trocken, Niersteiner Pettenthal, 2011
Riesling Feinherb, Gau-Bischofscheimer , 2012
Silvaner Trocken, Laubenheimer Edelmann, 2011
Grauer Burgunder Trocken, 2012
I have published the following postings about Mirjam Schneider:
International Women's Day 2012: Meeting the Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer of Mainz, Germany
Weinfest im Kirchenstueck: Meeting the Winemakers of Mainz-Hechtsheim and Tasting Their Wines, Germany
In the Glass: Mirjam Schneider's 2007 Merlot No.2 from Rheinhessen, Germany
The 31-Days-of-German-Riesling Concert Cruise Around New York Harbor with the German Wine Queen Julia Bertram and the 3 Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Eva Vollmer and Mirjam Schneider from Mainz, Germany
Tina Huff and Weingut Fritz Ekkehard Huff
Tina Huff’s name does not yet appear on the labels of the wines she makes, as her father still is very much involved with many aspects of winemaking at Weingut Fritz Ekkehard Huff. Tina is however increasingly moving to the fore. Tina Huff: “Today my parents Ekkehard and Doris still manage the operation, but following my studies in Geisenheim I am in the process of taking over as the fourth generation in the winery. My sisters Daniela and Johanna have chosen other careers, but their views are still very important for me”. Tina just got married with a young man from New Zealand, also a winemaker, who also works at Weingut Fritz Ekkehard Huff.
Wine making at the Huff family goes back by 300 years. But for many years, wine making was part of a larger mixed farming operation and the wine grapes were sold in bulk to other wine makers. Tina Huff’s forefather John Huff III. was the one who in 1948 took the bold step of starting to bottle his wines. Through marriage, he had added 2 hectares of vineyard land to his own 2.5 hectares, making bottling a sustainable operation. Over the following years, the share of winemaking increased while the role of agriculture and livestock decreased at the Huff Estate.
“Our goal is top quality wines’ says Tina. “For this, you need healthy and aromatic grapes. Healthy soils with high humus content and a functioning micro-organism are important. We do not use synthetic fertilizers; we encourage beneficial insects and work with natural and managed vegetation of the vineyard.“
“Of our 6 hectares of vineyards, 1.5 ha is “Rotliegend”. This is about 280 million years old clay and sandstone alteration. The special feature of these soils is the reddish coloration, which is caused by oxidized iron, like in the Niersteiner Roter Hang”.
Tina Huff's Wines at the Long Night of German Wine, Weingut Ekkehard Huff:
Riesling Trocken, vom Rotliegenden, 2012
Riesling Trocken, Pettenthal, 2011
Riesling Trocken, Rabenturm, 2011
Scheurebe Trocken, 2012
I have published the following posting about Christine Huff:
International Women's Day 2012: Meeting the Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer of Mainz, Germany
The 31-Days-of-German-Riesling Concert Cruise Around New York Harbor with the German Wine Queen Julia Bertram and the 3 Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Eva Vollmer and Mirjam Schneider from Mainz, Germany
At Terroir (Murray Hill)
We met for a glass of wine in the late afternoon of their first full day in New York City. They did not have a program for their stay in New York City. The only thing they were sure of was that they had to be on Thursday evening at restaurant Hearth for the Long Night of German Wine. But they were still struggling with some basic issues, such as getting cash out of an American teller with a European credit card.
At the 31 Days of German Riesling New York Harbor Cruise
Tina Huff, Eva Vollmer and Mirjam Schneider also participated in the 31-Days-of-German-Riesling New York Harbor Cruise with the German Wine Queen Julia Bertram, who flew over from Germany to New York City for this event: A 3-hour voyage around New York harbor and a bottomless bottle of Riesling, i.e. an endless supply of German Riesling. The boat trip was organized by Riesling Guru Paul Grieco. Temporary New York resident Stuart Pigott was also on the boat, in addition to 300 Riesling fanatics …. and hundreds of bottles of German Riesling, dry and fruity-sweet.
At Terroir (East Village)
After the cruise, we went to the (original) Terroir wine (East Village) for an after-party, where we met Berlin-based food and wine writer Ursula Heinzelmann.
At Hearth Restaurant - The Long Night of German Wine
The Long Night of German Wine took place on Thursday, July 25th. It started at 11:00pm. Paul Grieco: “We are raising money this night for a charity very close to Stuart's heart: the HOPE Charity in South Africa, which dedicates money to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.”
As I was unable to attend the Long Night of German Wine, so let me quote Stuart Pigott: “Either way it was quite a night, although one of the conclusions I drew was a disappointing one. The three young winegrowers from Rheinhessen – Christine Huff from the Fritz Ekkehard Huff estate, Mirjam Schneider of the Schneider estate and Eva Vollmer of the eponymous estate – were the stars of the show, just as I’d hoped they’d be. But again and again our guests fired the same question at them: where can I buy these wines? The problem is that they jumped to the normal New York Wine City (NYWC) conclusion that if the wine is this good it must already be imported to NYWC. This way of thinking is understandable when you see the gigantic range of French and Italian wines available here, but those wine growing nations have had powerful lobbies in the city for a long, long time. In comparison, German wines have only recently begun to attract that kind of attention (again) and many importers of German wines are still selecting what they import as if the recent quality revolution in places like Rheinhessen had not really happened. That’s sad also because American consumers are missing out. Calling all young / dynamic wine importers: this is one big chance for you and whoever sticks their neck out first will get to cherry pick the new generation of German winemakers. I think the expression is go for it!
As you can see from this picture, also taken in the early hours of this morning, here was quite a buzz at the Long Night of German Wine. It was the three winemakers standard quality wines as much as their top bottlings which amazed. In this category, the 2012 Riesling *** from Mirjam Schneider was enormously ripe for its modest price, with an aroma of yellow plums and considerable power. Christine Huff’s 2012 Riesling “vom Rotliegenden” was a total contrast with its sleek, lithe body and aromas of rose hips and herbs. Just to prove that Rheinhessen isn’t only about dry Riesling Eva Vollmer’s standard quality 2012 Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc) had a bouquet of freshly-picked green beans, was powerful and round, yet fresh and cool. The single-vineyard bottlings from the trio – the Rabenturm dry Riesling from Huff, the Edelmann dry Riesling and Silvaner from Schneider, and the ‘Kult’ wines from Vollmer – are all of a quality which ought to earn them plenty of listings in NYWC’s best restaurants.”
schiller-wine: Related Postings
When Americans Drink German Wine - What They Choose
Winemaker Eva Vollmer is Germany’s Discovery of the Year 2010
Weinfest im Kirchenstueck: Meeting the Winemakers of Mainz-Hechtsheim and Tasting Their Wines, Germany
In the Glass: Mirjam Schneider's 2007 Merlot No.2 from Rheinhessen, Germany
International Women's Day 2012: Meeting the Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Mirjam Schneider and Eva Vollmer of Mainz, Germany
Ombiasy Wine Tours: Wine and Culture Tour to Germany Coming up in August 2013
Impressions from the Riesling & Co World Tour 2010 in New York
Late Night German Riesling Tasting with Riesling Gurus Paul Grieco and Stuart Pigott in Washington DC on the 2013 Riesling Road Trip, USA
German Wine Basics: Sugar in the Grape - Alcohol and Sweetness in the Wine
Stepping up: From 3 … to 4 Quality Levels - The New Classification of the VDP, Germany
Approaches to Classifying German Wine: The Standard Approach (the Law of 1971), the VDP Approach and the Zero Classification Approach
Kick-off of the “Summer of Riesling 2013” with Chef Driss Zahidi, a (German) Dr. Loosen, an (Austrian) Tegernseehof and an (Alsatian) Trimbach Riesling at Le Mediterranean Bistro in Virginia, USA
Summer of Riesling with Annette and Christian Schiller in Washington DC, USA
Summer of Riesling 2013 and 31 Days of German Riesling 2013 in the United States
The 31-Days-of-German-Riesling Concert Cruise Around New York Harbor with the German Wine Queen Julia Bertram and the 3 Wine Amazones Tina Huff, Eva Vollmer and Mirjam Schneider from Mainz, Germany