Wein Goutte!
9/5/2024
It's always a special day when we get to write about wines made by someone truly close to us, in this case, a dear friend who enriched our lives while she was in New York City, and who went on to champion real wine at Restaurant Candide in Montreal before winding up in Austria and settling down in Germany, where she now makes delicious, soulful wines that we get to share with you today! Wein Goutte is the project of Christophe Müller and Emily Campeau and is a small winery and vegetable farm located in Franken, Germany. Emily, otherwise known as Emy, was the original Chef de Cuisine at the first iteration of Racines NY. During the first 6 months of Racines NY, I helped open the restaurant as the head bartender, and I got to experience firsthand Emy's passion for cooking, hospitality, and wine, and her infectious warmth and hilarious sense of humor that she shared with the staff and clientele. Now it's with great honor and excitement that I get to share her wines and ciders with folks near and far. These are bottles that I can imagine drinking happily with Emy and our friends, they are not precious or complicated, but they are by no means simple. Invigorating is a word that comes to mind!
What follows below is an hommage to the wines and ciders from our good friend and their US importer, Stephen Bitterolf from Vom Boden, and info from the wonderful website that Emy built for the Wein Goutte project, complete with lots of details! As she told me in a message recently: "I was a frustrated buyer looking for information for so long that I made a very very updated website :)"
We first became friends with Emily Campeau when she worked just down the street from us at restaurant Racines in New York. Ever-buoyant, smiling, laughing, brilliant (and always thinking about food and wine), she was our type of person.
Emily moved to Europe in 2018 and fell in love with another ex-chef, a German named Christoph Müller. They married and moved to Franconia, to a tiny village about two hours east of Frankfurt. They now tend a very large vegetable garden and a few hectares of vineyards which include the iconic grape of the region, Silvaner, but also some Müller-Thurgau, Grauburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Domina, Regent, Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier) and a small cadre of PIWI varieties.
In other words, their vineyards (and therefore their cellar) are a veritable chef's table of flavors and textures (they are literally the "chefs de cave") and the wines they make are simply brilliant creations with a bistro-sensibility that keeps them light and dry (two signatures of Franken wines in general) and always wonderfully fun. Yes, these are buoyant wines with an unpretentious drinkability to them, neither wildly cerebral (though they can be deceptively complex) nor so carefree to be just "Glou Glou" - but more than any of this they are joyous. As chefs themselves, their wines scream for food and a big table with a lot of laughing. All of the wines have a savory-herbal undercurrent and lively acidities that make them profoundly versatile on nearly any dinner table - they are plush but refreshing, and always playful.
Even the wine names are having fun. The "Beach Goth Rosé" is an easy wine (that's the beach part) with a cerebral, serious streak (the goth part?). The "Pasta Buzz Blend" is Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau with dashes of everything and the kitchen sink; it is perfumed and floral, salted and herbal, feather weight yet with a rustic structure to, begging you to drink one more glass (if you're like me, you'll say yes!). The "Du bist Du" is pure Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier), herbal and stony, compact and sorta perfect. Finally, the Silvaner ("My Beloved, you are a Snapping Crocodile") ... well, this is the final course of the meal and we've all had a good time, and maybe the mood turns a bit more serious. After all, we'll never meet again this young, you know? This is a deep wine, structured and dense - decant it. It's ok to be serious, every once in a while. But then again, lighten up. A toast to these wines is in order. These wines are perfect for the wonderful bistro your home is, when everyone's smiling and laughing. -Stephen Bitterolf
Method: Some of the apples were fermented whole in juice then crushed and pressed after two week. The cider then fermented to dryness in stainless steel.
Aging: In stainless steel until bottling.
Grape(s): Regent 60%, Domina 30% Pinot Gris 5% and 5 % of a small plot on the hillside planted to a mix of red Piwis: Cabernet Jura, Cabertine, Cabernet Cortis, Monarch. Half of the Domina was purchased fruit from a nearby friend who also works organic.
Vinification: The Regent was pressed directly. The Domina was one night on the skins and pressed the next day. The Pinot gris was on the skins for 7 days. The red hybrids were vinified as a red, destemmed and macerated for about 8 days, the juice was dark as the night, and these 200L brought some goth personality to the rosé.
Aging: In stainless for 11 months + five months in bottle before release
A note about the name: A beach wine? Yes, but make it goth.
Grape(s): Müller-Thurgau 30%, Bacchus 15%, Muscaris 15%, Pinot Blanc 15%, Johanniter 15% , Silvaner 10%
Vinification: Muscaris, Müller-Thurgau and Bacchus were direct pressed. Pinot Blanc and Silvaner had a touch of skin contact for about 2 days, with stems, before being pressed. Johanniter was fully fermented on the skins without stems.
Aging: Everything in stainless except the Johanniter which was aged in used 500L barrels, and the small amount of Silvaner was also in used oak. Aged for 11 months in stainless and oak + 5 months in the bottle before release.
A note about the name: An ode to the feeling of having eaten too much pasta. We all know it.
Grape(s): Schwarzriesling (aka Pinot Meunier)
Vinification: The grapes were destemmed, and macerated for 10 days on the skins with very gentle punchdowns once a day to keep the cap wet without breaking it.
Aging: 11 months in used oak, one oval halb-Stück of 700L, one 500L and one 225L.
A note about the name: Du bist du = You are you.
Grape(s): 100% Silvaner
Vinification: Silvaner has a high pectin content, so it had a good soak for an average of three days (depending on the pick) before pressing, in order to soften the skins and get the best out of the pressing process.
Aging: In used 500L barrels for 11 months + five months in the bottle before release
A note about the name: A line from the the excellent song “O You with Flowers”, sung by the Canadian band Royal City.
