Red Dawn: Unexpected Wines from Eastern Germany

André Gussek remembers very clearly how it all got started: Right around the time he was hired as cellar master at the historic eastern German Kloster Pforta winery in 1982, “the first Spätburgunder vines, West German clones obtained via foreign trade,” arrived at the estate in Naumburg an der Saale, roughly 60 kilometers from Leipzig and some 220 kilometers from Berlin. “In the fog of history, it was difficult to see precisely where they came from,” Gussek explains with characteristic calm. Much clearer is what they became: a catalyst for red wine to assume “an ever-larger role” in the former...

by Rainer Schäfer · source ↗