Friday 1 April 2011

Weingut Alfred Franger & Sohn

Last week a friend and colleague of mine took me to visit a vineyard in the region where we work. After a 30 minutes drive we arrived in a small village called Heuchelheim-Klingen where Weingut Alfred Franger & Sohn is long-standing. My friend knows these people for over 15 years already and we were very friendly welcomed. And after 15 minutes we were already in the wine-tasting room!

I told the lady of the house that I lately find that most German wines all taste the same, in some way. She began to laugh and told me that the taste I meant, is typically for this region! So she poured a centimeter of a light red wine, and that was exactly the taste I meant. Then we went on to taste some other red wines - and oh man, was I surprised! Completely unexpected flavours of oak, lychee, smoked wood, vanilla and more.
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Their son, who is also in the family-business, joined us and he is really full of enthusiasm and has a drive to make the best wines and trying out new ways of doing this! We were given the honor to taste a wine, bottled last weekend, made through a completely new and daring process. Well, even a week old, this young wine was really fantastic!

My friend had planned to go here anyway to buy a few boxes. But he was by car! I had come to work by train. So I just picked one bottle of each wine I was allowed to taste during our pleasant conversation and dragged a box home with me.

Being with real wine-lovers and talking about wine and such, is always very nice. So I list here some of their, all very good!, wines, in no particular order (but it might be alphabetic), and my favorites are marked:

franger-acolonfranger-blancdenoir
franger-cabernetdorsatrockenfranger-cuveesuperior
franger-cuveetrinitasfranger-dornfelderclassic
franger-dornfeldertrockenfranger-regenttrocken
siegerrebemueller-thurgau

Here are some photo's from their street and terrace:

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A view of the village

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The tasting room

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The terrace outside