On Wednesday morning I woke up at 5:00 am and drove 5 hours to Hamburg. I arrived at the Hotel Baseler Hof around 11:30 am. A Twitter meeting was planned for the afternoon. This was organised by Mario Scheuermann alas weinreporter, who is a very well known wine critic and journalist. The agenda was for me to present and discuss Greek wines. Also invited were Dr. Eckhard Supp alas enoworldwine, who is the publisher of ENO WorldWine, as well as Michael W. Pleitgen alas weinakademie, who runs a Wine Consulting and Education Business in Berlin. Mario Scheuermann's charming wife odorfa also was expected to join us. I had invited my good friend Christos Kokkalis as a surprise guest.
The Tschebull Restaurant was chosen as the venue. At midday, I transported the wines to be presented to the Restaurant in order to cool the whites and decant some reds. The setting was impressive, the Tschebull is a very modern and light-flooded place, at a very central location. At 2:30 pm I picked up Christos Kokkalis from the Central Railway Station. He checked into his hotel and we arrived at the Tschebull just after 3:00 pm.
After a short while, Mario Scheuermann and Eckhard Supp joined us. Michael Pleitgen was delayed, as he was training some chefs and sommeliers in Luebeck. We had a very lively and constructive discussion about the Greek wine market. The presentation/tasting started at 4:00 pm. I had selected eight different wines, 2 whites and 6 reds, out of about 30 labels that I carried to Hamburg. Christos brought a bottle of his 2006 Trilogia. We took time to taste and discuss every single wine, and odorfa joined us half way through. It is always fascinating to hear top tasters arguing with each other about personal preferences, as this just shows that complex wines waken different perceptions in different people. Everyone at the table agreed that all wines presented were captivating - and half of the wines shown received particular high praise. I was of course very pleased with this, as I believe so strongly in the quality of selected Greek wines available today.
Michael Pleitgen arrived at 6:00 pm, he interviewed me and tasted a few wines as he had to catch the train to Berlin at 07:00 pm. Eckhard Supp, Mario Scheuermann and odorfa stayed until 08:00 pm. Christos and myself were then joined by the Sommelier couple Rene Baumgart und Dagmar Willich for dinner at Tschebull. I arrived back at the Baseler Hof at 10:30 pm and surfed the Internet. Mario Scheuermann had already twittered about the Greek wine tasting, the next morning I found articles by Michael Pleitgen and Eckhard Supp, also reporting about the event.
Links to reports in German:
Weinakademie Berlin: Mutiger junger Mann
ENO WorldWine: Griechenland
Drinktank: Tetramythos
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