Nierstein Wine

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Saturday, June 11th

Let's get back to the real day's adventures in this wonderful wine country.  The picture at left shows the Rhine river from the vineyards of Nierstein.

Martin takes us to Nierstein around 11:00 by a scenic back road through another village with an old communal bakery oven that's been converted into a room. It has a hexagonal base, sort of like an Indian oven in Colorado, it looks like an adobe structure. 

We drive up the river to Oppenheim, the next village beyond Nierstein. The verge by the road and the vineyards are filled with red poppies in bloom (c.f., Flanders Fields). There's a huge Cathedral in the gothic style the dominates the village as we come down a twisting narrow road through the vineyards.  The cathedral has a wedding, maybe several, it's Saturday. We see a bride in the street dressed in a typical white dress on the way to her vows that sunny day.

The cathedral is in the gothic style and was built over a thousand years ago. In the 1600's during a French "scorched earth" policy the church was, like everything else around here, severely damaged. This area has been variously French and/or German with bloody battles staining the history. The one end of the Cathedral wasn't closed in again until the 1930's. It is a tremendously tall place with wonderful acoustics, lovely stained glass windows, and old burial crypts of the famous citizens from years gone by.

Outside are the flying buttresses to keep it standing and the gargoyles to put the "Fear of the Lord" into the citizenry. It would have been built as a Catholic church but these days it's a Lutheran Cathedral — you will recall Martin Luther, the reformation, and the Diet of Worms (1521). Worms is just up the river a bit from here. Homes in Germany's have little plaques out front saying "Martin Luther slept here".

Outback of the church there's a charnel house with neatly stacked remains of long gone folk who died between 1400 and the 1600's. The bones of some 20,000 folks have the remain stacked in there like cordwood. Most would have been victims of the bubonic plague, the black death, which ravaged Europe.

Kate and Cindy are impressed by this Cathedral; Reg says it's not the Cologne Cathedral. But, apparently it's a close second to the Cologne Cathedral! Martin tells us the Cologne Cathedral will fit inside St Peter's in Rome. Can that be true? Whether true or not it is pretty amazing what these folks built way back then.

Kate asks how many died to build it. I don't know about these cathedrals but I know of others where the walls and/or vaulting collapsed several times during the construction. The problem is the exterior walls are so tall with large openings for stained glass windows to bring in the light. This means that a very thin wall, basically a series of thin columns, has to support the vaulted ceiling and something has to brace the columns else they would buckle out. Hence the flying buttresses to brace the columns of the walls. It's quite an architectural accomplishment and, even today, it would be a challenge if one were to attempt to build it.

After the cathedral we are back in Nierstein with Martin, Veronika, and their children Christopher and Ines. The kids are shy but starting to take to us — they are opening up and become quite fun as they day procedes. They ask us, "Why didn't you bring your car? We take our car on the ferry to grandma Jean. Can't you put your car in the ferry too?" We reply that no Canada is too far away for that. Christopher is in grade one and Ines is in kindergarten. "Kinder" in kindergarten is a German word that means child and "garten" means garden. That's an odd constrution; why isn't it KinderSchule? Do we grow children in a garden? Martin and Veronika are near 40 (Martin was a classmate with Reg in graduate school). She doesn't drink, something that Martin and Reg make up for, but we warmed her. She's shy but opens a bit to us as well. They're thinking of coming to Canada next year for a holiday and we encourage them to come and offer to put them up. We shall see.

The afternoon's adventure is to enjoy the beautiful sunny afternoon at a large wine tasting in the vineyards along the Rhine at Nierstein. This is a special event this weekend to show case the local vintners, it's an event held every year at this time. It's held in the local vineyards within walking distance from the village — Martin and Veronica jog up these slopes to keep fit. We saunter up these slopes sampling wines from 20 or so different vendors at several temporary tented stations. Over the hill from Nierstein they bottle the cheap plonk for export to foreign markets like ours — Black Tower and Liebfraumilch being the two names we recognize. They are the sickly sweet Rieslings we find in the LCBO back home. It turns out the plonk we get is fermented out and then topped up with juice to make it sweet. It's also blended from all sorts of grapes. What we get today at these tastings is the best of the best, strictly regulated, and grown right here in these vineyards!

Riesling wines are well regulated and come in several designations. "Auslese" are hand-picked and selected very late harvest wines which can very sweet. "Spätlese" is a late harvest wine were all the grapes are picked at once. "Kabinett" is the regular stuff which here is quite good. And there are the quality designation from Tafelwein (table wine) to 5 levels of Qualitätsweine it Prädikat (QmP) (quality wine with attributes). It's all very complicated and I'm intentionally ignoring the very sweet designations Beerenauslese (BA), Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA), and Eiswein which I would count as dessert wines.

The Auslese wines are naturally very sweet. Reg had one very much like a ice wine with a strong Riesling taste (hints of kerosene). The Auslese are fermented right out but still have enough residual sugar left to be quite sweet. Cindy and Kate tell me they had lots of Auslese that were quite dry (I guess so but that's not my recollection). The tastings were in proper small wine glasses that held 0.1l (100ml or about 3 oz). You could have a half glass but they were usually served 3/4 full. A half glasses tasting went for around 1DM with better ones for 2DM.  The very sweet full glass of Auslese that Reg had went for 6DM but that was the most expensive by far — a fair price for liquid gold.

By the end of the day each of us must have drank at least one liter of quality Riesling wines having done a good sampling of the hundred or so wines from the 20 or so vintners at the seven different stations on the hillside outside of Nierstein. We were really impressed by the dry versions which we seldom see back home. These are all very nice quality wines.  

Martin and the girls have decided on the best of the Auslese they have sampled and have headed back up to their tent. The vintner speaks great English and is a very friendly fellow. He knows about Canadian wines, especially ice wine, and  gives Kate a deal: 30DM for the two bottles rather than the regular 36DM. This isn't cheap — but it's the best of the best and you'd never get it in Canada. We gave a bottle of Pat when we got home even though he's not too keen about white wines. We're sure he'll be impressed.

We saw a tiny and very very narrow tractor spraying grapes. It's a wonder it doesn't slide down the steep hillside. It's not as steep as in the Rhine Gorge but it is pretty steep. Nearby we can see the Rhine river and barges working hard transporting goods. When the barges are empty they sit high in the water. When loaded they're so low in the water you think they're going to issue an SOS as they're about to sink! Water is lapping over the side of the boat, and the wheel house to the rear is raised so the captain can see over the cargo piled high on the boat.

We stumble back down hillside into town and Martin takes us to the local wine Co-Op where we sample even more wines say eight or so and even a couple of local grappa. After this the diary falls silent. I'm sure we ate somewhere in Nierstein (I discover we had pizza at the "Winzerhaus" which is a kinder-friendly place — there's lots of photos of us goofing around with the kids), we made it safely back to our hotel in Mainz and somehow safely onto our airplane the next day in Frankfurt for the return flight.

Slides scanned and notes composed during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, March 2022 — as if living through the OMIGOD! COVID variant wasn't bad enough! The diary entries were made by Cindy, Kate and Reg at the time.