My wife Annette turned 60 recently. She celebrated her birthday in 4 stages. I turned 60 a year before her and celebrated my birthday in 2 stages.
Christian Schiller's Birthday Celebrations
Madagascar
The first celebration was in January 2012 in Antananarivo, Madagascar, at the house of my daughter Cornelia Tremann und son-in-law Chris Tremann, with Malagasy friends and others, including the German Ambassador.
See:
Schiller’s 12 Favorite Restaurants of Antananarivo, the Capital of Madagascar
Clos Nomena: Taking the Wine of Madagascar to New Heights
Fine Wine and Fine Oysters in Madagascar: Oysters from Fort Dauphin and Wine from Clos Nomena
Sea, Sand, Soul and Sakafo, and Whales and Wine – At Princesse Bora Lodge on Ile Sainte Marie in the Indian Ocean
Frankfurt am Main
The second celebration was half a year later in Frankfurt am Main at Weingut Schaetzel in Nierstein, Rheinhessen with my German friends and family. In Antananarivo we had French, Malagasy and South African wine, nothing special. In Germany, we were treated to the wines of the up and coming German winemaker Kai Schaetzel at his estate in Nierstein.
See:
Celebrating Riesling and my Birthday at Weingut Schaetzel in Nierstein, Rheinhessen, Germany
A New Fixture in the Reemerging Red Slope of Nierstein - Visiting Kai Schaetzel and his Weingut Schaetzel in Nierstein, Rheinhessen, Germany
Annette Schiller's Birthday Celebrations
Charleston
My wife Annette celebrated her 60th birthday in 4 stages: The first one was a week at the beach on Kiawah Island near Charleston, South Carolina, with children and grandchildren. Charleston has a fantastic wine bar and restaurant scene, but this time we had less time to take advantage of that.
See:
Schiller’s Favorite Wine Bars in Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Nepal
On her actual birthday Annette arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal. She spent two weeks with our daughter Katharina, who worked in the south of Nepal on a research project in the area of “Dry Riverbed Farming”. To welcome her mom on her birthday, Katharina had orgnized a bottle of Moet et Chandon (hard to come by in no-wine country Nepal) and even two champagne glasses to salute her mom`s birthday on the roof top of the backpackers hotel she was staying in. For the evening Katharina had made a reservation in the restaurant at the Dwarika´s hotel, a stunningly beautiful, enchanting old Rana palace, where they had a 21 course Nepalese tasting menu composed of only organic ingredients. Annette´s 60th birthday coincided with the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay and famous mountaineers came to Nepal and a lot of celebrations took place in Kathmandu. Katharina trecked to the Everest base camp and ran into Reinhold Messner.
Rolling Stones
Then followed a Rolling Stones Show in Washington DC, with a 1976 Riesling Meddersheimer Paradiesgarten Spaetlese Trocken at Proof before the show.
It was a very memorable concert. Sold out. Most of the people, including Annette, were standing and dancing throughout the 2 hours plus concert.
The 1976 Riesling presented itself as a senior citizen that is still going very strong. Dark golden in the glass, intense notes of honeysuckle and vanilla on the nose, still good acidity, did not stay too long in the mouth, but was a very pleasant wine. And the history and memories!
See:
Rock ‘n’ Roll and Wine: Rolling Stones Live and Wine at Proof in Washington DC, USA
McLean, Virginia
Final stage: The kids cooked for mom and I selected the wines from our cellar - with grandchildren Lorelei and Johanna. Otto - our third grandchild - arrived on this planet a few weeks later.
The food was exceptional; some of the courses were close to Michelin star level, I felt. The selected wines were all very close to our hearts and all presented memorable events and people in our lives.
NV Roederer Brut Premier
Dinners with Annette have to start with a glass – or two – of Champagne. We started with the Roederer. I should have opened a Taittinger, because this was our “House Champagne” when we lived in Paris as I had access to the Taittinger (the regular brut) at a discount via the Office of the International Monetary Fund and it is Annette´s favorite Champagne. Unfortunatley I did not have a chilled bottle in the cellar.
See:
Schiller’s Favorite Restaurants, Brasseries, Bistros, Cafes and Wine Bars in Paris, France
2009 Hamilton Russell Vineyards South Africa Chardonnay
Annette and I as well as our kids, we all love Africa. We lived three years in Madagascar, one of our daughters got married in Madagascar, and we worked and travelled extensively in Africa. So, I selected as first white wine a wine from the area – a South African Chardonnay from Hamilton Russell, a winery we visited in 2011 and where Annette and I had a fabulous time sipping wines and watching the whales and their newborns passing by Hermanus, a stone´s throw from the Hamilton Russel winery.
The stop at Hamilton Russell Vineyards, the producer of outstanding Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines in the Hemel en Aarde (Heaven and Earth) valley, just behind the seaside resort of Hermanus in Walker Bay, was our last stop on a recent South Africa wine trip, but it was one of our best stops.
The Hamilton Russel Vineyards has become a hallmark of fine South African Pinot Noir and Chardonnay over the last few decades. “We want to produce wines as Burgundian as possible here in South Africa – Wines from South African soil with a Burgundian soul” says Anthony Hamilton Russell, the owner of the estate “notwithstanding the rather warm climate in South Africa. But the climate is rather cool here in the Hemel en Arde valley. And we have the right soil for the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay”.
Hamilton Russell Vineyards produces 20.000 cases of Chardonnay every year. Low yields is one of the guiding principles at Hamilton Russell Vineyards along with organic farming. In 2008, for example, the yields amounted to 35 hectoliters per hectar for the Chardonnay.
See:
Burgundy Wines in South Africa: Hamilton Russell Vineyards
1997 Lorcher Pfaffenwiese, Weingut Troitzsch, Spaetlese Trocken
These are our (Annette’s and my) favorite German wines: Spaetlese Trocken – harvested late and fully fermented. Weingut Troitzsch, which, as far as I know, does not exist anymore, was known to only produce wines which where bone dry and rather high in terms of acidity. This 1997 was excellent – still fairly young, fresh, crisp and with a lot of backbone. Annette and I very often went to Assmannshausen to visit the Troitzsch winery, from where you had a gorgeous view on the Rhine river below. This 1997 wine we bought on our last visit to the winery, shortly after Mr. Troitzsch sen. had passed.
1995 Chinon, Domaine du Raifault
The first time, Annette and I went to Chinon, was when our good friend Stefan fell in love with Marie Luze from Chinon and got married in a Chateau on the banks of the Loire river. This 1995 we bought many years later on a trip from the South of France to Paris, with all 4 children in tow. Our oldest one, Katharina, was 16 at the time and we all remember vividly the moment, when she got out of our van, telling us us that she was sick of the family vacation and that she would go to the train station and go to Paris where her very best friend from boarding school lived. Despite many attempts by her brother and sisters to convince her to stay with us, she took off and went to Paris. We were shellshocked, recovered a bit later and went to a winery to buy a case of this wine.
There was a lot of controversy about this wine because of the obvious “pipi de chat” on the nose. Most of my children rejected the wine, Annette and I liked it a lot.
2006 Hightower, Pepper Bridge Vineyard, Walla Walla Valley
We visited the Hightowers in Washington State when we undertook a very interesting winery tour through Washington State and Oregon. Annette fell in love with their wines. Hightower Cellars is a small winery in the Red Mountain area of Washington State, owned and managed by the charming husband and wife team Tim and Kelly Hightower, about 200 miles south-west of Seattle.
Since its inception, Tim and Kelly have shared all of the responsibilities of Hightower Cellars, which include those as a winemaker, but also accountant, marketer, forklift-operator and janitor. It all started in 1996, when Tim was introduced to a co-worker by the name Kelly. Their infatuation for each other and wine was mutual, and this led to the idea to start their own winery a year later. They began to fulfill their common dream in Woodinville, north of Seattle, by renting a non-descript warehouse space and establishing their winery there, while keeping their day jobs and buying grapes. Months of hands-on cellar rat work and diligent research in their free time paid off with ovations of their inaugural release of a 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon. Case production steadily increased from then on to 1200 cases over the next six years.
In the fall of 2002, the next big step forward happened, when Tim and Kelly moved their home and winery operations from Woodinville to Benton City, after purchasing 15 acres of prime, undeveloped vineyard land.
With the conviction that the finest wines are made from grapes where winemakers have complete authority over its management, Tim and Kelly immediately began plans for retrofitting the existing barn as a working winery and transforming most of the acreage into rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, with smaller portions of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec, leaving 3 acres for their home and retrofitted winery.
Pictures: Tim and Kelly Hightower with Annette SchillerToday, Tim and Kelly, in addition to their Red Mountain estate fruit source fruit from the Horse Heaven Hills and Walla Walla Valley appellations. “We will continue to source grapes from the Horse Heaven Hills and Walla Walla Valley appellations” said Kelly. “We believe that diversity in terroir is essential to maintaining the complexity of our wines. It also gives the winery greater flexibility in production choices during adverse weather conditions that could influence low-lying vineyard sites in Washington State”.
See:
Visiting Kelly and Tim Hightower and their Hightower Cellars in Washington State, USA
The Wines of Hightower Cellars in Washington State, US
2002 Lafon Rochet, Saint-Estephe
Annette and I always loved Bordeaux wines. Even during our student years we managed to scrape some money to travel to Bordeaux and buy some wines.
Château Lafon-Rochet is a 4th Grand Cru en 1855 in the Saint-Estèphe appellation of the Medoc. It is one of the 5 classified properties in the appellation of Saint Estèphe. Its grounds are separated from those of Château Lafite to the north by the width of the road and from Cos d'Estournel by a dirt path.
The tasting with Michel Tesseron at Lafon-Rochet last year during Annette’s Bordeaux Tour was one of the highlights of the tour. No wonder that the forthcoming tour to Bordeaux in September of this year again will include a stop there.
See:
An Afternoon with Owner Michel Tesseron at Château Lafon-Rochet, 4ème Cru Classé en 1855, in Saint-Estèphe, Bordeaux
1975 Weingut Ernst, Eltviller Taubenberg, Riesling Spaetlese
This was a wine from the cellar of my grandfather. He used to by his wines at Weingut Ernst in Eltville and we inherited his wines after he passed. Some people say, when you drink wines older than 30 years, you drink foremost the history of this wine. And we did. We talked about my grandfather, a gregarious man, the Weingut Ernst that played a decisive role in searching for and tracing family members after my family had become refugees in the wake of WWII. The wine was definately a senior citizen, but in very good health, as Jancis Robinson likes to say. It was a wonderful, aged (sweet) Spaetlese, still very pleasant to drink with a memorable after taste.
schiller-wine: Related Postings
Schiller’s 12 Favorite Restaurants of Antananarivo, the Capital of Madagascar
Clos Nomena: Taking the Wine of Madagascar to New Heights
Fine Wine and Fine Oysters in Madagascar: Oysters from Fort Dauphin and Wine from Clos Nomena
Sea, Sand, Soul and Sakafo, and Whales and Wine – At Princesse Bora Lodge on Ile Sainte Marie in the Indian Ocean
Celebrating Riesling and my Birthday at Weingut Schaetzel in Nierstein, Rheinhessen, Germany
A New Fixture in the Reemerging Red Slope of Nierstein - Visiting Kai Schaetzel and his Weingut Schaetzel in Nierstein, Rheinhessen, Germany
Schiller’s Favorite Wine Bars in Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Rock ‘n’ Roll and Wine: Rolling Stones Live and Wine at Proof in Washington DC, USA
Schiller’s Favorite Restaurants, Brasseries, Bistros, Cafes and Wine Bars in Paris, France
Burgundy Wines in South Africa: Hamilton Russell Vineyards
Visiting Kelly and Tim Hightower and their Hightower Cellars in Washington State, USA
The Wines of Hightower Cellars in Washington State, US
An Afternoon with Owner Michel Tesseron at Château Lafon-Rochet, 4ème Cru Classé en 1855, in Saint-Estèphe, Bordeaux
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