The fifth annual Riesling week starts today (May 18th). Restaurants and retailers around New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami will showcase Riesling's incredible versatility.

Climate change breaks the traditional links between wine and place. Gastronomica's climate forecast for Alsace, Mosel and Kamptal.

At an in-store tasting at Crush I had the opportunity to taste the first straw wine from the Mosel since 1971, made by Weingut Stein.

Weingut Stein from the Mosel bought and rented more parcels of the steep St. Aldegunder Himmelreich vineyard.

Der Kellermeister is now curating the Riesling page on Snooth.com, the world's most comprehensive wine database, featuring millions of reviews and hundreds of thousands of wines. "Symphony with horns", Kellermeister's first guest blog, appeared in Snooth's blog section.

"Wein-Erbhof Stein" was the official name, "Weingut Stein" said the cork, and the label said just "Stein". The naming was a bit confusing so the brothers Stein decided to officially settle on "Weingut Stein" as the official name of their winery.

"Florals and citrus fruit with a slightly toxic finish", thus could read a typical tasting note in the near future. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $3.9 million grant to develop a robot that will spray vineyards with chemicals too toxic to be handled by humans. That is quite worrisome. Why not spend the money to find a way to reduce the use of pesiticides in vineyards?

An important decision-making group of wine consumers completely forgotten by marketing departments are breastfeeding women. My wife nurses our son but at the same time likes a glass of wine now and then. Forget California. German Riesling comes to her rescue. In this case the immensely complex 2006 Hofberg Riesling Spätlese from A. J. Adam. At a mere 8% alcohol it has almost 50% less alcohol than the average Californian Chardonnay.

While drinking Knebel's Von den Terassen 2007 I realized that more wines should show bitterness. It's the opposite of "sexy", I suppose. I never liked sexy wines, to be quite honest with you.

On May 9 Hermann J. Wiemer winery is going to offer a vertical Riesling tasting at the winery: 10 years of Dry Riesling. This should be a very interesting tasting as Wiemer has for many years produced some of the finest Rieslings in the Finger Lakes. For more info email the winery.