Day 7: Nahe two ways about it

A quick drive an hour or so from Winningen and I was at Monzingen for a tasting with Frank Schonleber at Weingut Emrich-Schonleber. This was hiccup day. I had the hiccups for the whole drive after stuffing my breakfast down in the morning. I actually got rid of them while I waiting in the tasting room for Frank, but then they came back as soon as we finished trying the 09s!

We tried a lovely sparkling riesling brut which I will import, then a range of rieslings from dry to eiswein. There were two TBAs fermenting away and not ready to taste. They'll either blend them and sell it direct, or bottle two and sell one direct and send one to auction.

It was interesting to see the differences between their two main vineyards, Fruhlingsplatzchen and Halenberg. I preferred the Fru spatlese and the Halenberg Auslese and, fortunately, Frank agreed. Who knows in a few months' time though, and we were splitting hairs. They are just different styles and will suit different people.

We had a nice lunch and tried matching four wines with a sea trout with a creamy sauce. Then Frank got the hiccups. Heh heh.

I drove about 15 minutes from here to Bockenau for a tasting with producer of the year Tim Frohlich at Schafer-Frohlich. We went through about 20 wines and my hiccups returned mid-tasting, damn it all. It was so annoying ... Tim reckons sweet wine cures them and in fact they stopped when we hit the residual sugar of a kabinett.

Again, a knockout collection. Tim won a lot of awards for his 2008 range and I am wondering how they are going to justify not giving them all to him again when this vintage is even better! He can seemingly handle a lot of different varietals too -- I really enjoyed his pinot blanc and pinot gris, and will probably buy a couple of reds from here as well!

I wanted cheap digs for the night but Frank booked me into a hotel at a local spa resort. I had a room well away from the main restaurant, but it was nice and they eventually forgot to charge me for dinner or the internet ... at least at checkout. I am sure they will catch up with me before long. I struggled to stay awake at dinner too but I enjoyed horrifying the waiter by ordering a Donnhoff spatlese (06). The menu was full of trockens so I wanted to shock him. He thought I would taste it and reject it, but I enjoyed it will all three courses, even steak.