I don’t know if I will be able to tie this into politics somehow… probably not… but good wine can be political! Everyone was asking for pictures… so, I stopped in at REAL yesterday and bought a multiformat memorycard reader for 19€(I forgot and left my USB camera cable at home) for my in-laws, and voila… I can send a few pictures!
This is one of the many fine Rieslings that we tasted yesterday at Joseph Schönleber’s winery… he and his wife proudly sat down with us and sampled about fifteen of their wines. Frau Dood and I will be bringing home two bottles of full-bodied Riesling and a bottle of Cognac…My brother in law stocked up with two cases.
The Schönleber’s were happy to accomodate our little party, and they have an internet site if anyone is ever in Oestrich and interested. This is a picture of the cellar, which is completely under their house and has been in operation since around 1100 AD! We were told that the oak barrels used in aging and fermenting are all from Germany and that the wood is of such fine quality that it is used around the world for this purpose.
We later went on a little walk long the Rhein, and took in a few sights… this is a swan who was paddling along seemingly effortlessly against the current…
And of course, just across the street from the swan is the Swan Hotel, which my brother-in-law describes as “old worldly” and very “ritzy”…
Sorry for the quality of the pictures, but I had to reduce them to about 15% of the original size, as I am using a Sony 8 mega-pixel camera… at that size, two pictures would wipe out the entire remaining memory of my website!
Tonight, we fly to Namibia, and supposedly will see much of the wildlife there as well as the desert. I will probably not be able to post more pics or write anything further until we return next week… until then, the Dood Hydrates!