Olewig Wine Festival, Trier

The annual Olewig Wine Festival in Trier, Germany's oldest town is ending tonight.

Once again we celebrated at Weingut Deutschherrenhof. Where else? Good music, good wine, good food. Ate lovely vegetarian Flammkueche.

This is what I wrote in my book about it. On the left vineyards of Olewig.

Annual Olewig Wine Festival:

“In the last few years we have preferred to sit in the garden of the wine estate Deutschherrenhof, belonging to the family Schieben-Oberbillig. The wines are excellent, the cuisine good and the music is normally to our taste.

The problem with German wines is that they are so completely confusing. In South Africa my favourite wine for many years was a Boschendal Blanc de Blanc or for special occasions a Backsberg Chardonnay. With the French Huguenots bringing the wine culture to South Africa, I have no problem choosing a good French wine. But German wines, even after thirteen years of living in a wine growing area, give me the jitters. Is aRiesling dry or semi-sweet? Unless it is written explicitly on the bottle, your guess is as good as mine.

Recently I have discovered a wonderful Pinot Blanc at Deutschherrenhof. And while grape varieties internationally stick to the names of their countries of origin, French or German or Italian, the Germans translate Pinot Blanc as Weissburgunder, which means the same as “white Burgundy”.

The garden of Deutschherrenhof was also a place for our children to play nearby when they were younger, safely away from mainstream pedestrian traffic, which can get very congested as the evening proceeds. And by eleven o’clock one has a wonderful view of the fireworks in the steep vineyards from their garden........”