Episode 125: A German Wine Tour With Stephen Bitterolf of vom Boden

Riesling is the signature wine of Germany, but many casual wine drinkers have less familiarity with other German styles or with the country’s wine regions. For this episode, importer Stephen Bitterolf of vom Boden helps demystify German wine and takes us on a tour of some of the country’s producers, including Shelter, Seehof, Moritz Kissinger, Hild, and Vollenweider.  

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Paul Clarke 

Hey everybody, welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe Magazine. I’m Paul Clarke, Imbibe‘s editor-in-chief, and we’re taking a short break from our recent onslaught of Martinis and Martini-related coverage here on the podcast to switch our focus over to another segment of the drinks world that richly deserves our attention in the months ahead, and that’s wine. 

More specifically, German wine, which is the subject of a feature in our May-June issue from contributing editor Betsy Andrews. In her feature, Betsy explores some of Germany’s wine regions as some of the stylistic approaches that German winemakers take when making Rieslings and other familiar wines from this region. 

But while Riesling is undoubtedly amazing, Germany’s wineries have much, much more to offer. So for this episode, we’re taking a short tour of some of the country’s wine-producing regions and the wines they make with Stephen Bitterolf. Stephen has many years of experience in wine, including earlier in his career on the retail side at Crush Wine and Spirits in New York, and for more than a decade now, Stephen’s been working on the import side through his company vom Boden, which has a catalog filled with German wines produced by independent and innovative winemakers. So grab a wine glass and your passport for this short tour of a few of Germany’s notable wine regions and the bottles to seek out for your wine-drinking needs this summer. 

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Paul Clarke

Stephen, welcome to Radio Imbibe. 

Stephen Bitterolf

Hey, happy to be here. 

Paul Clarke

I’m so pleased you could join us for the podcast, and so pleased that we get to talk about a topic that I think is a favorite of yours and one that I’m quite curious about, and that is German wine. Your background, of course, you know, you’ve worked across the wine spectrum for many years, and years ago at Crush Wine and Spirits in New York, before you shifted gears and launched your own import company, vom Boden, which doesn’t focus exclusively on German wines, but they make up a significant part of the portfolio. Is that fair to say? 

Stephen Bitterolf 

Yeah, for sure. It probably is 95% or 90% plus, yeah. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. And having had that kind of experience where at one point you were working with wines from all around the world, what was it about German wines and German winemakers that initially grabbed your attention and pulled you into the category? 

Stephen Bitterolf 

I mean, at the beginning, it was the singularity of them and probably the acidity. I mean, you know, the wines I was very attracted to and still am. Champagne, Chablis, it sounds very cliched right now, but going back 20 years, there were a lot of other wines that were more in the radar probably at the time. You know, there’s a lot of California, kind of very rich wines from the Central Coast. There was a lot of Bordeaux was still quite a big thing and a lot of Australian wines.

So the aesthetic of the moment 20 years ago was not necessarily lightness and acidity and transparency and a lot of things, a lot of buzzwords from today. But I like that. I like the signature of those wines and the uniqueness of Riesling and its kind of special singular deliciousness just spoke to me and attracted me in a ways that a lot of other wines did not. I mean, you know, you fall in love with the most superficial things probably in the beginning at least. And that’s probably the case with Riesling. It’s just so delicious. 

Paul Clarke 

And, you know, when you’re working with clients, do you find any kind of familiarity gap when it comes to German wines, as opposed to wines from France or the West Coast or other regions? Or is there a decent level of knowledge with some of these regions and producers? 

Stephen Bitterolf 

I mean, I think at the specialized level, we’re a very, you know, we’re a very small company. So we are dealing with, you know, oftentimes I would say the 10% who are most engaged in what they’re doing, you know, whether that’s a restaurant or retail, they’re digging deeper and doing thoughtful purchasing. At that level, people know the general characteristics of what we’re doing and what German wine are, but there is just so much more to talk about. 

And I think one of the biggest issues with German wine is just, it doesn’t have the romance woven into it in a way that the French wines and California wines and most other places do. When you say Chablis or you say Napa Cab, you have probably a sensibility of what the wine is, but you also have a sense of what the place is and what it means in a more abstract version. When you say Mosel, for most people, Mosel, I don’t know, maybe they do, maybe they don’t. If you say Rheinhessen, Württemberg, Baden, almost none do.

And so a lot of what I am trying to do my company is trying to do is, to explain the stories and the narratives behind these wines and around the wines to try and give them that automatic, you know, the hope is in 20 years that I say the word Mosel, Mosel, and people think to themselves delicate, high acid, sharp, floral, mineral, can be dry, can be off dry, can be sweet. And there is a certain almost like automatic, instinctual reflex to what that is. 

Paul Clarke

And you mentioned Riesling a moment ago. And I think when you mentioned German wines to, to your average person on the street, they may think of Riesling or maybe one of the umlaut wines, you know, like Grüner-Veltliner or Gewürztraminer, but then that knowledge quickly peters out. As you’ve done your own explorations of German wines and wine varietals, what other grapes or what other styles have earned a special place in your heart? 

Stephen Bitterolf

This is one of the greatest ironies in going back to that first question of why shift to German wines. One, it was just the superficial deliciousness. But two, the second reason was that the world needs another French wine importer like it needs a hole in its head. There’s enough people doing really good work explaining what is a beautiful wine culture. I didn’t think there were that many people discussing the intricacies of German wine culture in the way that I wanted to. And so the great irony is when you talk about German wines, and if people have some reference points, very often still, I get the whole, oh, I like Riesling. It’s sweet, right? And it just is what it is. But this is still 95% of the conversation. 

What I’m trying to change it to, German wines are low in alcohol, and they’re high in acidity. And that is the consistent signature. That is the reality of making wine at a very cool climate place, right? That is, those are the fundamentals. The thing the German winemaker wakes up thinking about in the morning and thinks about as they go to sleep at night is acidity and how to control the acidity. And it is 30, 40, 50 years in the past it was something to think about, but also a problem. The acidities were so vibrant, so harsh.

And I think cocktail people probably can understand what I’m saying here, because so much of cocktail art is balancing acidity and sweetness, right? And these flavors. The German winemaker of the 1960s and ’70s was dealing with a really cold climate and absolutely audacious levels of Riesling. And so, the residual sugar is one way of dealing with that, leaving a little sugar to balance it in the same way.

The art of the cocktail involves leaving a little sweetness to balance the acidity of certain spirits or certain citruses, right? So, you’re dealing with the same mechanics. And when you get beyond Riesling, to go back to your question, I mean, we see it throughout all the grapes now, right? So, a lot of people are shocked to learn that Germany is, I believe it’s the third largest grower of Pinot Noir. Sometime, you know, people argue, was it 900 years ago or 1,300 years ago that Pinot Noir was introduced into Germany? Either way …

Paul Clarke

A long time. 

Stephen Bitterolf 

A long, by any measure that I understand, a really long time. And so, Pinot Noir is called Spätburgunder. It’s spät meaning late, so people maybe know that from the term Spätläse, which is late harvest. Spätburgunder just means late ripening burgundy grape. And so, that has been in Germany for a few hundred years, and it is a huge part of the culture. So, you will find in the Pinot Noirs of Germany the same key fundamentals, acidity, freshness, delicacy, right? Rarely having alcohol levels that get much above 12, 12.5. You find that in Chardonnays, which is a newer grape introduced more in the ’90s, Sauvignon Blanc, Sylvaner.

This was one of my, it was and is one of my major quests, is that people associate Riesling with Germany and Germany with Riesling and assume that if you’re able to sort of decode and to demystify and to make a logical structure in your head about what Riesling is in Germany, that you understand German wine. And that’s just not even close to the case. Every wine culture is so complicated. And German wine culture is no less complicated.

Riesling is probably the biggest chapter in the book. It’s probably the first chapter in the second chapter with a lot of footnotes at the end of your book. But there’s 20 or 30 other chapters that revolve around Spätburgunder, Pinot Noir, that revolve around Sylvaner, that revolve around Müller-Turgau and Siegerrebe and Elbling and so many other grapes that have just been kind of tossed to the side because they didn’t fit in easy narrative. And the easy narrative normally is what’s selling well. 

Paul Clarke

So we like to give our listeners, give our audience the things they need to really dig into a category and start exploring for themselves. So what I’d like to do is to have you walk us through five wines or five producers that could give us a good foundation for getting started. Where would you like to start? 

Stephen Bitterolf

Germany and Europe is often talk about terroir and the prominence of place. So we, you know, we can start south and kind of head north. And in so doing that, I’m sort of articulating or hoping to at least make comparisons with where Germany sits in comparison to most of the other winemaking regions, at least in Western Europe. So if we start in Baden, that is in the south of Germany, at least in the southern part of the winemaking regions, it is to some extent the right side of the book from Alsace, if people know Alsace.

So if you’re looking at a hypothetical magazine, you have your, you know, your spread and you have your left page, that would be Alsace the spine would be the Rhine River and that is the border between France and Germany. And so on the right side that is Baden. It’s a very long north-south kind of finger. It is in the south, though.

And so we do have more red wines here than than in other places. So it’s obviously a complex story. But there is a great little estate called Shelter. It’s run by a husband-wife team. They’re farming somewhere around 10 hectares. And they buy fruit from some more hectares but they have a Spätburgunder, a Pinot Noir called Lovely Lily that retails, you know, depending on the market, somewhere around 20 bucks, 25 bucks maybe. And is just an incredible bottle of wine for the price. It is, you know, a lot of what vom Boden wants to do is we focus on small production growers. And we believe that there’s a lot of value and a lot of quality in small production wines and small production culture, for lack of a better phrase.

Right, I mean, what we’re buying and the things we’re supporting with our dollars is probably the most important tool we have right now to shape the world we want to live in. And for me and for the growers I work with having just real small production growers and small estates working is a really important part of a healthy ecosystem.

Paul Clarke

So moving on from there would be the next pick.

Stephen Bitterolf 

All right so if we are in Baden, which again is, you know, kind of right parallel with Alsace, we drive, let’s say, two hours north. Not even really an hour and a half maybe, we’re in then the Rheinhessen and the Rheinhessen is the largest appellation in Germany. It’s a 30,000 hectare or so kind of rectangle squarish thing that sits right below the Rheingau if people know where that is and right above the faults. So we’re we’re heading north and the Rheinhessen is to some extent the jack of all trades.

People who have maybe heard of Keller, who’s one of the most kind of famous wineries probably in the world at this point and certainly one of the most famous in Germany. They are in the Rheinhessen and they make unbelievable Rieslings and really great Pinot Noirs and now more and more Chardonnays and sparkling wines and other things. So really the Rheinhessen can kind of do no wrong.

There’s a small estate. It’s actually Keller’s brother-in-law in fact Florian Fouth who’s making the wines there about the same size maybe they’re 20 hectares or something like this. And they make just incredible dry and off-dry Rieslings so you’ll see Riesling Trocken that’s dry Riesling, Riesling Fineherb, but that is off dry. They make Chardonnays, an amazing just kind of a state level Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. All of these wines are in the 17 to 25 dollar range. You really can in Germany get borderline profound wines at really really really fair prices which I think more storied places can say less and less these days

Paul Clarke

So we started in Baden moved to Rheinhessen what’s our next stop?

Stephen Bitterolf

I would go just a little bit north in in the Rheinhessen. Both the estates I’ve mentioned—the Shelter and the Sayoff—are fairly traditional. You know they are for if you’re looking for a dry Riesling or looking for a Pinot Noir you’re going to get a sort of platonic ideal of what that is.

If we go just a little bit north so we’re in the Rheinhessen still there’s a young grower named Moritz Kissinger. Now these wines are a little bit harder to find but they’re worth seeking out. He’s studied in Champagne. He’s kind of traveled everywhere. And it’s a really exciting narrative that’s happening in the Rheinhessen that is is pushing boundaries and exploring what the potential of some of these overlooked areas is.

So he makes incredible sparkling wines there’s a Winzersekt means like a winemaker’s sparkling wine that’s in the 40 to the 50 dollar range so not inexpensive but if we’re talking about Champagne you know we’re often much much beyond that. So fairly priced great white wines great red wines that speak to me a little bit of what the Jura is or what the Savoy is they have a lightness and elegance a kind of herbal intensity so Moritz Kissinger is really worth seeking out.

Paul Clarke

I was really hoping to get a sparkling wine in there so so thanks for throwing that in there

Stephen Bitterolf 

For sure.

Paul Clarke 

Two more stops, where are we heading after this?

Stephen Bitterolf

We could go to Hild. So this is one of my favorites, and it continues the sparkling wine story. Because, again, I as I said at the beginning that you know the story of German wines and the first thing that people should think about when they think about German wines is low alcohol and high acidity.

One of the tools of dealing with high acidity is residual sugar but another one is secondary fermentation so making sparkling wines there’s another region that’s you know south when you’re talking about Germany but north in France it’s quite cold it’s called Champagne. And that is a place that has employed secondary fermentations for many many years as a way of making to some extent what was an undrinkable still wine palatable and and in many cases delicious.

So that sparkling wine phenomenon is something that was really a huge part of Germany in the late 19th century a lot of names we have in Champagne, Krug, Mumm, Heidsieck, these are German names and so there was a huge amount of cross-cultural sharing in the late 19th and early 20th century before the wars. And so Germany had a huge sparkling wine production and a huge sparkling wine culture that largely collapsed through the two world wars. 

But if we go to Hild, this is one of the most unique and interesting areas in Germany. It’s tiny. It’s called the Obermosel, which translates to the Upper Mosel. It is, depending on how good your European geography is, it is southwestern Germany, right where Germany hits Luxembourg and France. And so it’s a tiny little region. It is, in theory, the Mosel. So the appellation is Mosel. And if people know Mosel, they probably know Riesling and maybe they’ve heard slate is the rock that’s there. And that’s true. But when we’re in this tiny little area, it’s only a few hundred hectares. We are dealing with Kimmeridgian limestone.

So we’re dealing with that same, it’s called the Paris Basin, this huge sheet of rock that runs from the cliffs of Dover through most of France popping up in, you know, Sancerre and Champagne, these other areas. And this is the last little easternmost parcel. And so Hild makes a really crystalline, sharp, high acid wine called Elbling, which I always think about a little bit as the Muscadet of Germany. So it’s really fresh. It’s a great wine to drink in the shower. It is not Grand Cru. It’s not going to, you’re not going to write poetry about it, but it’s just a beautiful, fresh, clear, honest bottle of wine.

And because they have quite a healthy dose of acidity, you will find sparkling wines. The Hild sparkling wine, second fermentation in the bottle, everything else, it sells for 20 bucks, maybe 25 bucks. And it is a real bottle of sparkling wine from just a beautiful, beautiful part of Germany that is overlooked and almost forgotten, though. So we’re trying to focus people back in on it. 

Paul Clarke 

I think there’s something to be said for that kind of very approachable, very budget-friendly kind of sparkling wine, where it’s not, you know, you don’t have to put this on the shelf and wait till, you know, your kid graduates from college or something. This is something that you can just have, like you said, in the shower or just, you know, when you’re barbecuing in the backyard or something like that. 

Stephen Bitterolf 

Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of, you know, the complications and one of the problems with wine culture is that it does become inevitably or very quickly, it doesn’t have to be, I shouldn’t say inevitably, but it oftentimes becomes a rarity in price thing, where the greatest wines cost exhorbitant amounts of money.

And it’s just, and that is where the discussion is. And that’s like talking about car culture and only talking about Lamborghinis. Like, sure, I’ve never been in one. I have no experience. I’m sure they’re great cars, but I drive a Subaru. It’s like 95% of life is lived with simple things that have a beauty to them because of their simplicity. And that is where, that’s where we spend most of our life. So to focus on the 1% and, and make this almost like, almost something that’s unachievable, I think does wine a great disservice. 

Paul Clarke

Right, right. We’ve got one more pick. Where, where are we going for this one? 

Stephen Bitterolf 

I’m going to go downstream. It’s counterintuitive. The Mosel, the Mosel actually starts this famous river of Germany, probably the most famous after the Rhine. Starts actually in Alsace in the foothills on the western side and then flows north. So we’re in the Obermosel, the upper Mosel. And as we go downstream, we are in fact heading north toward a town called Koblenz, where the Mosel dumps into the Rhine and then it heads north. But the Mosel, this area of the Mosel, this is the land of slate and Riesling and these cliff vineyards that have been romanticized and talked about quite a bit and deserve all the history and the lore that’s there.

So there are a number of estates, it really is one of the most magical places on earth. I want to tell people, if you want to go see a wine region that is still authentic and real and not touristy and spectacularly beautiful, completely singular and still a little bit dirty under the fingernails, which I love, there’s an authenticity there, it’s raw and rugged, is the Mosel.

Small estate called Vollenweider was started by a Swiss guy, great, great friend of mine, and an estate we have imported right nearly from the beginning, who passed away two years ago, three years ago, I guess, spring, summer of ’22. And his partner in the winery, Moritz Hoffman, a really young guy, has kind of carried the torch and almost elevated the wine. So it’s Vollenweider, it begins with a V. you say the V’s is F’s in German, so it’s Vollenweider, but he makes just amazing, amazing Rieslings. Anything you want that says Vollenweider on it is spectacular, from the kabinetts, to the sweet wines, to more and more the dry wine.

So, Felsenfest is a wine you’ll see from Vollenweider, it has okay distribution, and you might find it around the U.S. It is just a mind-boggling bottle of wine. It tastes like drinking mineral water from the earth, with a little bit of a citrus and ocean spray, and it costs 25 bucks. 

Paul Clarke 

Fantastic. And, you know, I hadn’t put a seasonal spin on this, but we are here at the beginning of summer, we’re having this conversation in June. And all of these sound totally appropriate for summertime drinking, as people start to explore that over the course of the season. 

Stephen Bitterolf

Absolutely. I mean, again, German wines, again, we have to go back to this. You know, making wine in Germany is a little bit like making wine in Canada, to sort of make a North American Europe translation that’s clumsy but speaks a little bit. You are dealing with high acidities, freshness, low alcohol. These are the perfect, perfect summer drinks. And in fact, you know, even the rosé phenomenon, which is probably dying down a little bit in the U.S. and becoming more healthy and stable. I always joke, yeah, go to Provence, but bring German rosé there because the German rosés have more acidity, more freshness, lower alcohol. It is just a part of the climate. It is literally terroir that makes these just amazing, incisive, and refreshing wines for the summer. 

Paul Clarke

We’re heading toward the exit here. Any final thoughts we haven’t covered yet on German wines? 

Stephen Bitterolf

I want to tell everyone to bring German wines to dinner parties and talk about them. It is an amazing culture, really diverse. Don’t be afraid to venture out beyond Riesling, to look into Trollinger’s and Elbling, and to seek out those restaurants and retailers around the world that are focusing it. Because it is one of the oldest and most confusing and greatest wine cultures on Earth, and all these things are, to some extent, liabilities in the market, right?

Something that’s complicated and requires a little bit of experience to navigate is a liability in this world that wants, you know, the Instagram, totally digestible, 10-second sales pitch. But I would argue that it is exactly this inefficiency and this complexity and the beauty of these wines that is the essence of our humanity. Spend the time, slow down, put your phones down, and go have some fun with German wines and bring them to dinner parties. 

Paul Clarke

Fantastic. Well, Stephen, thanks so much for joining us for the podcast. I know I have a project for the days ahead to start picking up some wines to drink, and I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us. 

Stephen Bitterolf

What a pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

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Paul Clarke 

You can find vom Boden online at vomboden.com and on Instagram @vomboden. Just look for the links in this episode’s notes to get there. We’ve also got links for more information on each of the producers that Stephen talked about, so you can just click on through to learn more. 

And that’s it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all our future episodes. We’ve got tons of recipes and articles and wine recommendations for you online at our website, imbibemagazine.com. Follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, Threads, and Facebook for all our day-to-day coverage. And if you’re not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, then here’s your opportunity to change that. Just follow the link in this episode’s notes, and we’ll be happy to help you out. 

I’m Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.