Heading to Vinocamp Franconia in Würzburg

On 21 July it was time again – the Vinocamp Franconia went into the second round – and I was simply allowed to be there as a participant only!
🙂

Dedicated Hannes took care of the organization and put together a great tasting program for the days.

As with the Vinocamp Rheinhessen, a meet-up was planned for Friday evening. Ilonka Scheuring was a great hostess and presented us her “sweethearts” with all her heart and soul. Who does not know her yet – her trademark are the pink rubber boots ????

On Saturday afternoon, the owner of winery Reiss in Unterdürrbach took us with him to his “Weinreisse” – from “Anreisse” to “Weltreisse” to “Traumreisse”. A funny idea to embed the different quality levels into one trip and a play of words on the fact that the German word for journey is Reise!
Afterwards we changed the location and started the next sessions with the Rot-Weiss-Rosé in the Bürgerkeller – many thanks to Sebastian for letting us make ourselves comfortable in his space!

SATURDAY SESSION 1
STONE WINE – WINE FROM THE STONE BARREL

I don’t know how well acquainted you are with wines from the stone barrel so far – it was a first for me!

We were informed by the winegrowers present about the advantages and special features of wine aged in a stone barrel:

natural material
real alternative to wood, even without introducing the wood aroma
very large surface area, up to 5x larger than the purely visible surface
they come in basalt, shell limestone and granite;
although apart from granite, the stones may tarnish if they are not occupied
… and very important – it seems there are also significant differences in quality here, which, for example, materialize themselves by the fact that the barrels can “sweat”.

During the wine tasting, we tasted the wines in part directly against each other, i.e. aged in stone barrels versus in steel tanks. It was astonishing that the same base wine was often perceived as more complex when aged in stone barrels and the acidity was more harmoniously integrated. Incredible!

SATURDAY SESSION 2
TAUBERSCHWARZ – THE RED ONE FROM THE TAUBER VALLEY

… Well…
Hannes really tried hard to put together a representative selection of this autochthonous red wine variety, which is native to Tauberfranconia. But the wines could not convince us. Surely there are good and suitable sites for this grape variety but obviously those are used rather for other “better-sold” wines. Therefore, we had the impression that the wines lagged far behind their potential.

Social wine tasting
Smoky Franconia – Franconian wine with noticeable use of wood

Here it went from white to red and across different grape varieties, while we also discussed extensively the term “noticeable use of wood” 😉
My quintessence:
Of course can Franconia also do “wood”, but preferably if it does not proverbially “batter” me.

With a cosy dinner, we let the first evening come to an end – many tasted wines later.

On Sunday we started directly with a tasting of the prize-winning wines from Vinum. Outside the Vinocamp, on Friday, excellent Silvaners of the 2013 vintage were tasted – “Five years later”. We were allowed to try a selection of them for breakfast, so to speak.
At least one Silvaner from Rheinhessen was present 😀

SUNDAY SESSION 1
SILVANER MATURED – STORAGE POTENTIAL OF THE FRANCONIAN LEADING GRAPE VARIETY

The specification had been that the wines needed to be at least 10 years old and the selection was stunning! From 2008 to 1990, there were some tasty vintages with us. What I found particularly interesting was that not only Spätlese or other higher quality wines held up well. The icing on the cake was of course the Silvaner from the Bürgerspital ????

SUNDAY SESSION 2
PINOT NOIR FROM FRANCONIA

Once across the best locations in Lower Franconia and one thing is certain:
If the Pinot Noir is grown in a good location and it is the cellar master’s favourite, then really great and appealing wines come into the bottle …
… and Spätburgunder has once again lived up to its reputation as the vine of origin!

SUNDAY SESSION 3
WINE TASTING ACCORDING TO PAR

Following the motto of “Not just participants, but also contributors”, I also offered a session called “Wine tasting according to the PAR system”.
What does that entail?
Because of the advanced time, we could not taste all wines, but tasted a Franconian Silvaner – how appropriate – and went through the PAR evaluation. I am sure that now this evaluation scheme will mean a bit more to everyone – being far more elaborate, detailed, and “discussion-centred” than many others.

At this point, once again many thanks to Brigitte from Treffpunkt Wein for her great support in choosing the wine, amongst other things!

… and then it was already over again, the second Vinocamp Franconia in Würzburg.