What's the next best thing to drinking wine?

Reading about drinking wine!

More from Eric Asimov, the approachable wine writer:

Mr. Know-It-All

Pork Roast and Riesling

This one praises a Washington wine from Chateau Ste. Michelle! Not the Anti-Chardonnay Anymore

Pinot Noir with an Umlaut

Hey! Someone from overseas has finally noticed a German grape other than the tasty but ubiquitous Riesling. Check out this article from Eric Asimov's drinkin' blog, "The Pour."

I myself was pleasantly startled to discover that the legendary Land of Beer is also swimming in jewel-colored rivers of gorgeous, award-winning, accessibly-priced wine -- none of which anyone outside of central Europe has ever heard of. A lot of them are simply well-known varieties with German names: Spätburgunder = German Pinot Noir, Weißburgunder is Pinot Blanc and Grauburgunder is Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris, etc. But Dornfelder? St. Laurent? Huxelrebe, Scheurebe? What are these?

Damn delicious, is what they are! Yet Eric nails it, I think, when he points out that "among the barriers to finding Spätburgunder in the United States, I forgot to mention one: It’s so popular in Germany, they drink most of it up." I can corroborate this. German wine producers (excepting those in the Mosel valley, with its long history of selling overseas) aren't interested in the nuisance of exporting -- not when they can sell as much as they want right here in Europe, and get the prices they're asking, without the hassle of tariffs and exchange rates. The wine growers here are small; no one is producing thousands of extra cases to ship overseas. Why risk trying to break into a new market?

I've also heard some people suggest that non-Europeans could be daunted by all the Umlauts and long names. But I dunno, that's never stopped anyone trying to pronounce -- or simply buy -- "Château Beau- Séjour-Bécot Bordeaux Cuvée." And when off-Continentals come here and try the wine, they jump right in. Look at my parents!

I think the main hurdle is simply lack of familiarity and precedent. People go for foreign-looking French bottles because they know about French wine (or at least know that others know it). Yet I have almost never found a German wine in the States -- anywhere! -- beyond the Riesling. Okay, there was once, in a huge warehouse-sized store in Phoenix called Total Wine that bragged a selection of 4,000 wines, where I found a single example: a "Dornfelder," which I put in quotes because this was the wimpiest, palest, syrupiest looking bit of flower-painted confection I had ever seen, hardly 9% alcohol by volume. Help! Slander! Fraud! This froot drink was not Dornfelder -- Dornfelder is a powerful, dark, deeply berry-noted purplish wine that can taste like cinnamon or leather, licorice or toasted vanilla; its body is so mighty that it is one of the few varieties (in my opinion) that really belongs in oak barrels, because it can not only hold its own against the wood (rather than being overwhelmed by it) but also carry it beautifully. Yet this sad little dribble was from somewhere in Germany. I could only surmise that some grower thought he could off his unsellable junk onto an unsuspecting American public. "They eat McDonald's," I could hear him scoffing. "They'll buy this crap." I was outraged for wine drinkers on both sides of the pond! O, the injustice! O, the criminal tragedy of it all!

Wait, there is one more "German wine" that I used to see on the shelf at Trader Joe's. But don't get me started on that cough syrup, which starts with "L" and ends with "iebfraumilch." No one in Germany has ever heard of it, either.

All of which would explain why, outside of central Europe, no one associates Germany with great wine. And which American importer is going to risk stocking his shelves full of Umlauts -- Domina Spätlese, Acolon, Frühburgunder -- when he can just refill the Bordeaux instead? I think this is certainly reasonable business sense.

And maybe it's to some extent a good thing, that Germany's wine villages are a quasi-secret. Maybe in a world of increasing monochromism and the availability of everything, it's nice to preserve a few traditions that you must visit to find. Who knows, would turning the focus to export mean the end of the small grower? In what ways would it change the wonderfully democratic nature of German wine culture? I'm not sure I want to see sprawling industrial vineyards here, like some of those giants in Australia or Sonoma Valley.

One benefit I think would result from increasing recognition of German wine has simply to do with national image. When much of the world thinks of France, they think of style and pleasure. When they think of Germany, they think of coarser (or even downright brutal) cultural artifacts. Thus a little more exposure for Germany's delightful, even refined, aspects would not be such a bad thing, I think.

In any case, I definitely think my Gentle Readers should get their booties over here to sample some deliriously fine cultural artifacts. :)

By the way, what is your experience with German wine overseas? What treasures -- or unpleasant surprises! -- have you discovered?

Männer und Frauen

One other thing that I've kinda had to come to terms with is a seemingly stronger tendency to define and and separate gender expectations. Not that we don't do this in the States, too, but it does seem comparatively overt over here.

Thankfully, I'm not nearly so rabidly sensitive to gender stereotyping as I was even a few years ago; indeed, as a taekwondo-obsessed teenager, God help the person who tried to tell me what girls do and don't do. In fact I feel more comfortable in my skin these days than ever before (a delightful aspect of increasing age). But it's still weird to be shopping for sleeping bags and be directed to the "ladies'" section. Ladies need separate sleeping bags? Why yes, I am enlightened: they are narrower and a bit shorter, and the foot area is better insulated. Okay, I reply, I suppose that makes some sense. Hey, says Bert, how come my feet don't get to be better insulated? Because women tend to have colder feet, explains the salesman.

I know sleeping bags are an odd place to start digging out evidence for gender attitudes. Yet I think this reflects a marked overall tendency to separate Women's Things from Men's Things. Of course in this case, we were also simply observing clever marketing strategy at work: the female versions are indisputably cuter, with flower patterns and cheerful colors. Marketers clearly believe that, if given an option, women will prefer women-specific things. And they're right, someone's buying it. Indeed, I found the cute sleeping bags quite appealing.

So why does this still make me feel somehow uneasy? Maybe I can illustrate it with a much more extreme example: imagine if there were explicitly black-people and white-people sleeping bags. One can argue that this is indeed the case, that marketers certainly aim for specific target groups. But imagine if you walked into a sport shop and the salesclerk suggested that you might like to see the outdoor equipment for blacks. You could justify it with all kinds of physical and social evidence: these deeper jewel colors look nice with darker skin, for example. Here are the sleeping bags for Asians, with elegant bamboo-screen patterns. Wouldn't that just be... weird? I guess I just wonder if it's vaguely dangerous to create artificial segregation where it's not overtly necessary.

Yet no one here seems to share my discomfort. A nice lady once showed me her shiny pink cell phone and proclaimed that it's perfect for Frauen, with its unthreatening technology and a calorie counter when you go walking. I smiled and complimented it. Hey, if you're pleased, you're pleased, right? But then I remembered the radio DJ who scoffed that if a woman could figure out Microsoft's new operating system then anyone could, and his female colleague just chuckling politely instead of picking him up by the throat (which is what I would have attempted to do). Then again, maybe she wasn't sure how she was supposed to react on the radio. In any case, it does seem that although the law certainly insists on surface equality, such men-do-this-and-women-do-this attitudes are apparently more tolerated -- even often accepted -- here.

Of course not all separation is equally irrelevant. There are women's parking spaces, for example, which sit in better-lit areas closer to the door. This is of course a commendable idea, considering the higher chance for women to be targeted by criminal activity in parking garages than men. I'd happily make use of this, and hope that others would, too. But the signs advertising these parking spaces bug me: you see a cartoon female selecting her parking space not according to safety, but based on its being "too dark, too ugly, too dirty... ah, perfect" -- which seems to shift the focus from practicality to pure (and even ridiculous: I mean, too ugly?) perceived female persnicketiness. An important difference. Yet no one I have ever prodded about this finds it weird.

Maybe my Feminist Kevlar is not entirely as stashed away as I thought; or maybe Germans are generally just more comfortable in their assigned male-female roles than some of us twitchy Americans.

Cultural Observations, Round Brazillion

I guess the newness of living abroad still hasn't worn off, if I'm still tickled by -- or at least, still logging -- the quirks and differences. I think that's a good sign. Maybe it means those pinch-myself, oh-boy-I-really-get-to-live-here moments are here to stay!

So bum da da dum, here is the latest roundup of Gee, How Swell It is to Live in Germany...

- I love how much Germans love their country. Not in a political or national sense (that's complicated enough!), but a natural one. The whole land is covered by a well-tended and well-marked network of walking/biking/hiking paths, dotted with cozy huts in which to park and rustle up a warm spicy Glühwein in the winter or sparklingly refreshing Schorle in the summer. And what's more, people use it. It's like Sunday is national Let's Go Outside Day, and everyone dons their gear (sleek and perfectly engineered to the purpose, of course ;) ) and joins each other for fresh air and sunshine. Bert and I have gotten out a couple times in the last week for nice long day-hikes through the snowy Odenwald, and our countrymen were out in droves -- families shrieking with glee on a sledding hill out in the middle of nowhere, jolly hiking clubs sharing their pear schnapps with us at one of the ubiquitous natural Points of Interest... to be sure, we Americans like our national parks, too, but there's a wildness and inaccessibility to them that I think can somewhat prohibit a spontaneous Sunday stroll through Yellowstone. The compacter forests of Western Europe seem somehow more manageable (and significantly freer of bears).

- This has become so second-nature to me that it feels odd to comment on it until I remember that we don't do this in America: that is, when you walk into a room for a meeting, you shake hands with everyone there. Every time. Even if you've been meeting for years. In my job, which consists almost solely of small meetings, I must shake over a dozen hands a day. It's somehow nice: I like making that physical and eye contact with each person you're about to work with (although it also means I've become a hand-washing freak! Back, ye colds and virii!). I need to remember to instruct my students that, in the States, this is only done when you are first introduced.

- The Pfalz has a noticeably French touch, which is not surprising, since this area has belonged alternately to both countries over the years. So although there's a lot of hand-shaking at work, you greet friends and friendlike colleagues with cheek-kissing. Left then right: squeek-swak. I find this pleasingly Continental and elegant (although am still American enough to let the other person initiate it).

- Frenchisms also abound in the dialect -- I even hear people exclaim "Mon Dieu!"

- I also like the Pfälzisch dialect itself. To be honest, I haven't always; in the beginning, it made me feel frustrated and excluded. Now, I still can't use it (although Pfälzer laugh when they hear me go "Ajoh" or "alla hopp") but I find it adorable. I love buying "näier Woi" in the autumn and hearing BASF employees say they start work at "sivve." (For you linguaphiles, here's an interesting overview of de Pälzsch.)

- Speaking of dialects, people have started asking me where I come from in the East! I guess that's what I get for living with a Saxon...

- Germans have often complained to me that their countrymen complain too much. It took a long time for me to gather enough input to verify this, but I think now I can agree that yes, they do. Not everyone does, and not all the time, but enough to make me notice and laugh. I mean, if Being Outdoors is the national pastime, Griping must come in a close second. You have a comprehensive national health care program, but have to pay -- gasp! -- ten whole Euros at each doctor's visit? Mon Dieu! The Deutsche Bahn will take you anywhere for even cheaper and faster and more comfortable than it is to drive by car, but it's five minutes late today? Ach, du lieber Himmel! I'm not sure where this comes from, this insistence on being (or at least appearing) easily unsatisfied. I wonder if it has to do with a cultural tendency to demand perfection and Ordnung, and displaying outrage at the slightest infraction would prove your own commitment to excellence. I dunno. Any other ideas?

Anyway, speaking of Germans, there is a lovely sleepy one waiting to have his breakfast with me. Time for some coffee!