Ten out of forty thousand - a nice selection of a great collection

How many bottles of wine do you store in you cellar? Ten, twenty or even a hundred? What about 40.000!? Yes, forty thousand. That’s the number of bottles that an elderly married couple in Würzburg, Franconia, collected over the last 40 years. And this are just the bottles which were stored away. Uncounted the wines that were drunk by Wolfgang and Luise Koegel, since they were infected with the wine-virus back in the 1970s. They made it their hobby to drive through the German wine regions and visit wineries almost each weekend.

Ten out of forty thousand

They amassed this great collection and till this day they open a bottle each day. Now in their 90^th the lease of their cellar was resigned and they had to decide what to do with all those wines. Be it fate or coincidence, they converged with Martin Steinmann, the owner of the wine estate Schloss Sommerhausen, who instantly was stunned by this compilation of German wines of the last 40 years.

But what to do with those wines? Taken by inquisitiveness about this hoard, Martin agreed to care about this fanciful assortment. The challenge was not only the mere number of the bottles but also that there were almost no duplicates, which made it barely impossible to commercialize this selection. By another coincidence the Vinum wine magazine got attention of this. This and the fact that the Koegls had no commercial interest with their wine heritage saw to it, that they bore the idea to salvage this for charity purposes.

Tasting for charity

“Transferring all the bottles to one of the cellars of the Weingut Schloss Sommerhausen was a challenging task, but the bigger exercise was - and still is - to screen and classify the bottles”, Martin comments this. The idea was to pack six bottles each into a cardboard box and merchandise them as a surprise package. The net profit of this benefits the charitable organization Wine Saves Life e.V. supporting child welfare in developing countries.

Besides this, Martin hosts a surprise wine tasting of ripe wines each month. Lucky me, I could attend one of this tastings. We had a line-up of ten white wines of vintages between 1976 and 1993, dominated by the German Riesling grape, but also one of Muskateller, of a Traminer and of a Scheurebe. One surprise was, that all of the wines were still drinkable, but the bigger surprise was how excellent some developed and matured. Especially Riesling with some residual sugar matures pretty well. The typical fruity flavors are complemented by balmy notes like honey, resin or wax.

You need not to collect 40.000 bottles but you could consider to store away some of your favorite wines for later. Much later! Ah, and if you don’t want to wait until then, I know from good authority, that there are still some surprise packages left. You could try to get one via the Vinum magazine (www.vinum.de/weinsammlung). See also www.winesaveslifes.de and www.sommerhausen.com for more information.

1993 Ortenberger Schloßberg
Muskateller Spätlese

1989 Wachenheimer Fuchsmantel
Riesling Spätlese

1984 Schloßböckelheimer Kupfergrube
Riesling

1983 Forster Ungeheuer
Riesling Spätlese trocken

1983 Niersteiner Petersberg
Scheurebe Spätlese

1983 Dürkheimer Michelsberg
Riesling Auslese

1976 Johannisberger Hölle
Riesling Auslese

Franconian wine boarded the Ark of Taste

In one of my early posts I told you about a very special wine from Franconia, called “Alter Satz”. The specialty of this wine is that it is vinified from a great variety of grapes -35 in total - which grow together in a single vineyard and are harvested and vinified together. This viticulture is known as “Gemischter Satz” (mixed planting).

Alter fränkischer Satz

What in the distant past was something like the perils insurance for the vintner to ensure that even in bad years he can harvest at least anything is nowadays a precious refuge of biodiversity. But there remained not many of those spots, because this doesn’t fit into a modernized, even industrialized viticulture. Especially in the German wine region of Franconia some vintners sustained such vineyards and preserved this tradition. Here this is called “Alter fränkischer Satz” and the Slow-Food organization recognized the deserving protection of it.

In the truest sense of the motto “eat and drink what you want to preserve” the Slow-Food Foundation for Biodiversity nominated the “Alter fränkischer Satz” as a new passenger to the Ark of Taste. The Ark of Taste lists more than 2000 heritage foods, plant and animal species from all over the world, which are at risk of disappearing. It focusses on the pleasure of good food with the commitment to the region it comes from and to the environment. By consuming those produce everyone can contribute to their preservation, because only if there is demand they will be produced. To be part of this Ark is a great honor for the tradition of Franconian winemaking.

You want to know how this wine tastes! Well that’s a pretty tough question and there is no easy answer. Take thirty and more grape varieties which are in different composition in each vineyard and in different degrees of ripeness. Harvest and vinify them together. Do I need to explain more? This is a too complex equation to solve. Each wine and each vintage is unique, and that’s what makes this so outstanding and worthy to preserve.