University of Virginia Library

XXII.
German Wines, and a Wine Cellar.[1]

UP the Rhine in the leafy month of June, one might
go further and fare worse, especially with regard
to wine. The fact is, it is a noble thing to find some
good in one's surroundings. To pass serenely and quietly
from Claret, Burgundy and Champagne to Schiedam
Schnapps and thence to Johannesberger, Marcobrunner,
Rüdesheimer, and even Piesporter, without a groan.
To take a glass of Completer at Coire or allay thirst by
Vin de Glacier, Yvorne, or St. Georges, through the
land of snow-capped mountains and yodles; thence descending
to d'Asti, Barbera, Campidano di Lombardi,
Canonao del Sardegna, Monte Fiascone, Orvietto and
Lagrima Christi; drinking Aguardiente, Sherry and Val
de Peñas in Spain, coming down to Bouza in Cairo or
Mahayah in Morocco, pitching into Vodke or Kisslyschtxhy
in Russia. Behold, QUO DUCIT GULA!

Perhaps, for euphony, it is the best way to sum up
German wines under the headings Rhine wine, Moselle
wine or the popular hock; for what Anglo-Saxon head

can always recall even a few names like Augenscheimer,
Assmannhaüster, Affenthaler, Bacharach, Brauneberger,
Bischeimer, Bessingheimer, Bodenheimer, Bechebacher,
Berncasther, Deidesheimer, Epsteiner, Euchariusberger,
Geissenheimer, Graacher, Grüenhauser, Hochheimer,
Hinterhaus, Johannesberger, Liebfrauenmilch, Laubenheimer,
Liestener, Mittelheimer, Marcobrunner, Niersteiner,
Oppenheimer, Pitcher, Rüdesheimer, Rauen-thaler,
Schamet, Steinberger, Steinwein, Schiersteiner,
Thiergartner, Walporger and Zeltingener?

It is a popular fallacy to suppose good German wines
are acid; they are dry, fine flavored, and keep better
than the five hundred year immortality of an oil painting.
As for the alcohol in them, by a careful analysis,
Hochheimer showed only 14.37 per cent, of pure alcohol,
while a very old sample, only marked 8.8, a lower figure
than almost any of the French wines.

Johannesberger from the Schloss, is the king of German
wines; twenty-five years ago, Mumm and Giesler
of Cologne and Johannesberg, held the vintage of 1822
at the rate of $10 per gallon; at compound interest it
would now be worth about $60 per gallon! This wine
with Steinberger, Geissenheimer and Hochheimer, have
the most delicate flavor and aroma of all German wines.
The warmest seasons insure the best vintages, so those
of 1748, 1766, 1779, 1783, 1800, 1802 and 1811 were
celebrated among the past generation as we now look to
1834, 1839, 1842 and 1846. Pure air and plenty of sunlight

are the best guardians for vines, and those erowning
the high lands yield wine of the best body, while those
in the low lands are poorer, and the wine requires years
to attain a really fine flavor. Next to Johannesberger
comes Steinberger of the Duke of Nassan, the iron hand
in a velvet glove, delicate as a zephyr, it has the strength
of a hurricane; kiss the beauty, but don't arouse the
virago. Hercules viraginem vicit, but every one is not a
“Dutchman!”

There is something very attractive in Liebfrauenmilch;
the best comes from Worms, it has a good body and
should be drunk reflectively, this milk for babes. While
Marcobrunner, Rudesheimer and Niersteiner are for arms
and the sword song of Körner.

Brauneberger ranks first among Moselle wines, and
according to young Germany, there is not a headache in
a hogshead of it; certainly after two bottles of it, there
was no kazenjammer next morning. The old story that
Bacchus, when he lived in the Father-land, having
invited Jupiter down stairs to make a night of it on
Brauneberger, so pleased the latter with this tipple, that
he at once ordered all he could buy, on credit, for
Olympus, to take the place of nectar, for a change; may
be true. When you go to Heidelburg, stop at the Black
Eagle Hotel, and ask Herr Lehr, the landlord, for a bottle
of Sparkling White Moselle; drink it in the courtyard
under the vine leaves, and to the sound of that
fountain where the large trouts swim!

To look forward for ten years to seeing a cellar and
then have it turn out a “sell,” is one of the agonies of
travel. Possibly under other circumstances, Auerbach's
cellar in Leipsic would have worn less the air of a shows
shop, or less like Julius Cæsar in peg-tops and a stove-pipe
hat than I found it, but not even a bottle of Hochheimer—those
paintings on the wall representing Faust's
appearance and disappearance, and the old admonition
of 1525:

could bring up anything ideal—so I left. At Mayence I
was more favored, and though the scene comes up through
several glasses dimly, at least the attempt can be made
to describe an old-fashioned cellar, where travelling
English don't ask “for that table, ah, he bored the holes
in, you know. Faust, I mean. Three wax stoppers,
and all that sort of thing?” “Haven't got it, sir!”
answers the kellner. “Then why the—don't you make
one!” says despairing England.

On the steamer from Coblentz, I formed the acquaintance
of an officer, a lieutenant, who was just off duty
from Ehrenbreitstein, and was on his way to Frankfort.
Arriving after sunset, we determined to stay that night
at Mayence, and go on next morning by railroad to
Frankfort. After dinner at the hotel, we strolled out to
look around town, and finally, as we crossed a narrow
street, he proposed a bottle of Brauneberger in a cellar
on the opposite side of the way, a quiet old nest, he

said, where only old-fashioned and well-to-do Mayenzers
were to be found. Down we went, and passing through
an anteroom, where a fine specimen of a broad-shouldered
middle-aged German was talking with a spectacled old
gentleman with the air of a Professor, in a land where
Professors are something; we were passing on to the
next cellar, when the broad-shouldered landlord, bowing
with great respect, saluted my companion with a string
of titles as long as a roll of sausages. Upon which the
Herr Professor, for such he was, lifted his hat politely
to us, and, salutations over, we entered the next cellar
attended by the landlord.

“Altmayer,” said the officer, turning to him, “a bottle
of that Brauneberger.” And duly and deliberately the
portly wirth departed, soon returning with the Moselle
Nectar and glasses. If Hasenclever has not visited that
cellar, he has sketched its match in some quaint old
German city, for there it was, an interior worth crossing
three oceans to sit in and drink Moselle or Rhine wine.
The low ceiling was spanned with groined arches, dusky
with age, not dark, as the olla color of Murillo, but a
light-brown coffee-color, with a dash of light, borrowed
from the lamp that hung in the centre of the cellar, and
whose light just penetrated to the great butts lining the
walls. The round table at which we were seated was of
oak, dark with age, and anything more beautiful in the
way of the light that shone through our brimming
glasses of Brauneberger, and was reflected on that dark

oak, I have never seen. The wirth having returned to
the ante-room, my companion, evidently pleased with the
interest I took in the surroundings of the cellar, judiciously
kept silence until I had thoroughly viewed it all,
sipping slowly the delicate wine, and wondering how all
the sunlight got into the cellar at night. There was
positively a thin golden cloud all around us, and such
serene repose as a traveller who has been through a
dozen galleries of paintings, innumerable churches, etc.,
all in one day, believes to be the height of pleasure, i. e.,
Kheyf!

“I am very glad we came here,” said the lieutenant,
“for I see you can appreciate what I have always
thought one of the most picturesque wine cellars in this
part of Germany. Have you noticed the grotesque
carving on that door leading to the further cellar?”
Turning my head in the direction indicated, I noticed a
pointed arch doorway, surrounded with the most beautiful
gothic tracery leaves, birds, monkeys, grapes, curious
grinning heads, all cut in stone, while the oak panels of
the door were rich in carved flowers and leaves.

“The oak door,” said the lieutenant, “is a modern
addition of the wirth's, but the rest runs back to the
16th century.” While I was still looking at the curious
carving round the door, three or four middle-aged gentlemen,
together with the spectacled Professor, entered
the cellar, and after polite salutations, drew up to the
table, and the wirth soon appeared with bottles and

glasses for the different private guests, for in such light
they all appeared and acted. Having a cigar case well
stocked with a supply of Partagas primeras, it went the
rounds, and the cigars were accepted after much urging
on my part, for the idea is not German; I had the satisfaction
of reaping an amount of gratified expressions
from each smoker that paid me for the sacrifice; for I had
nursed the few I brought with me from the States with
great care. Conversation flowed on easily, and the
second bottle of Brauneberger went the way of the first;
it was even better nectar than its leader. The light in
the cellar appeared brighter and brighter, the golden
cloud seemed filled with bees-wings humming, the great
butts looming out of the mellow light looked like brown
Franciscans making merry over a bottle of sambuca.
The spectacled Professor told a right good story two feet
broad, the other elderly gentlemen kept it up! The
lieutenant ordered a third bottle of Brauneberger, which
was better than its predecessors.

Then there came in a wandering violin-player, blind
as a bat, and a very pretty girl with a guitar, who was
not blind, as her bright eyes, shining on the handsome
lieutenant, plainly told, and when she sung that pretty
song of “Frau Nachtigal,” it appeared to me, after the
wine, that she accented those lines—

and regarded the lieutenant in the adoring style, permitting,
at some future time, any amount of poussiring, as
the Germans have it. Then we ordered just one more
bottle of Brauneberger, and the lieutenant, taking the
guitar from the pretty girl, sung in a fine, baritone voice,
“Soldatenleben”—
and the old gentlemen joined in the “Valleri, vallera,
valle-ra!” chorus with hearty good will and kreutz
fidélely!

Several glasses of wine were bestowed on the blind
violinist, a collection made for the pretty girl, who
assured the lieutenant her name was Aennchen von
Tharau, which he doubted, insisting on it that Aennchen
died in 1659, and lived in Himmel Strasse! But she
gave us a parting song, prettily sung, and floated off into
that golden cloud and hum of bees, and the old Franciscans
smiled away from the big butts, and the spectacled
Professor bore us backward in his discourse to the days
when men passed whole lives as we were now passing
hours, and believed they were doing right, the illiterate
heathen.

“The Herr Professor will have us in Egyptian bondage
directly, unless we hurry away,” said the lieutenant
to me in a low voice; so we arose, as arise men who
bear away many bottles; and kindly greetings and

adieux bore us off to the wirth, who hoped to see us
soon again, and bestowed all the titles on my companion
that he had inherited and won; and we sailed out into
the moonlit streets of Mayence, and down to the hotel
by the arrowy Rhine, and slept the sleep of men who
have drank good Brauneberger in a grand old cellar
surrounded by refined and genial companions.

Vale!