The Wines of Stein!
Friday, 7/22 at Vine Street!
Tastings at 5:30 and 6:30pm.
$10 ($5 for Club Members!)
Reserve your spot HERE!
Ulli Stein and vineyard management specialist
“Dr. Ulrich Stein is infamous for such lost causes as the reclamation of abandoned, frighteningly steep sites; and battling the entrenched 1971 German Wine Law. It seems, though, that he's more David than Don Quixote... because he's won them all.”
– David Schildknecht, Wine Advocate
There's SO much to say here.
Like how Ulli Stein is considered one of the genuine wine visionaries of Europe, American obscurity notwithstanding;
Like how he wrote an impassioned manifesto for the salvation and restoration of Germany's oldest, steepest, and hardest-to-farm vineyards... including paying vineyard workers more to farm them;
Vineyards of Optical Non-illusions
Like how he has repeatedly fought the German Wine Law (including, but in no way limited to, fighting to make Pinot Noir, a grape widespread in the region before the Nazis banned it in 1937, legal again, David v. Goliath-style, and won!
Like how his wines are on the restaurants of the top restaurants in the world - Noma very much included. (And like how he seemingly couldn't give a s!# about that.)
Like how he and his leonine mane of hair live in an actual hotel that he actually calls “der Gros Hotel Abgrund” (The Grand Hotel of the Abyss)... where the only currencies one can pay for one's room with are stories, music, art and culture... and in which wine is a necessary element of every symposium.
Enter the Steinian Abyss
Indeed, it's hard to explain to you just how idiosyncratic, how wildly rebellious, and how thoroughly contrarian the winemaker Ulli Stein is... and how viscerally electrifying his wines are.
In the impossibly steep, slate-strewn terrain of some of the Mosel's greatest and oldest sites, Ulli makes organic wines of tremulous acidity and tremendous joy. These are the bottles that make us leap out of our seats, froth at the mouth, and make our dinner tables look a little better than they are.
Come join us this Friday, as Stein ambassador and fellow abyss-walker Rick Stiles pours at least five of these electrifying wines! Blauschiefer! (i.e., 'Blue slate.') Weihwasser! (i.e., 'Holy water.') Palmberg! The 'Ohne' Riesling (whose first vintage Noma bought almost all of!). And the 'Redvolution' Pinot Noir (but one of the many delicious instances in which Ulli fought the law and won!).
Impossibly steep! Utterly contrarian! And freakishly delicious! This is a tasting that's not to be missed!