Great Finds in Baden: Food, Wine and Music!

4 April 2013: We enjoyed the performance of the Berliner Philharmoniker so much at the Easter Festival in Salzburg last year that we decided to support their move to Baden Baden and signed up for a couple of their performances this year. It was not a good idea to go to a 3-hour opera with jetlag - it was the Magic Flute! I had difficulty staggering out of the concert hall. The second evening's performance of Mahler Symphony No. 2 was much more animated, especially with so many instruments and musicians being involved - the percussionists at the back were most agile in their swift but unhurried manoeuvres from one station at one end of the stage to another at the other end. (You can also find the Sir Simon Rattle recording of Mahler Symphony No. 2 in the Cathay Pacific's inflight music library!!)

We stayed at the Brenners Park Hotel (www.brenners.com) where there is a 1 Michelin star restaurant Brenners Park-Restaurant. The hotel probably belonged to another era, with its opulent grandeur, classic architecture and elegant deluxe, but the service was extremely friendly and professional. We had a room which looked onto the famous Lichtentaler Alley behind the hotel, blending into one picturesque scene. With the overnight snowfall just before our departure, this was transformed into a romantic view of calm and splendor, rather mesmerizing.

I highly recommend the gourmet restaurant which featured a wonderful à la carte menu, together with two degustation menus, one the gourmet menu and the other thoughtfully designed for vegetarians! My favourites were the carrot dish and the espuma of potato and leek with black truffle - vegetarian dishes can be so beautifully presented and complex in texture and flavours!  Here are our recommendations:



Greetings from the chef - I loved the combination of beetroot, smoked eel and green apple foam!



Purée of Ancient Carrot, finger carrots, earth of mixed grain bread and golden quail egg
(Almost too pretty to eat!)



Espuma of potato and leek with black truffle
(Richness without heaviness - heavenly!)



Two kinds of brussel sprouts and savoy cabbage, with macadamia nuts,
purée of butternut squash and lemongrass-coconut emulsion



Breton turbot with perigord truffle butter, ravioli with confit onio and watercress
(best turbot dish Richard has ever had!)


Whole seared sole, with balsamic-caper glace, baby leaf spinach and artichokes (I did not take a picture but it really was very tasty - can easily be the best Dover sole dish I've ever had!)


The young chef Paul Stradner (who arrived in 2012) came out to greet us on our last evening there - his enthusiasm and dedication clearly reflected in the quality, designe and presentation of the dishes! We had less luck with the senior sommelier, who dismissed our questioning of the condition of a bottle of Spätburgunder from 2000 (with the alarming whiff of rusty nail and nail varnish), and authoritatively put it down to our lack of experience with local Spätburgunder!


Needless to say the food went particularly well with wines from the region. We were so impressed by the white wines from Baden, the warmest and most southern region in Germany with very diverse soil types, from granite and gneiss in Ortenau to volcanic soil in Kaiserstuhl and chalky-loess hills of Tuniberg. A third of the area under vines is planted with Spätburgunder with Weissburgunder and all other Pinot varieties accounting for about half of the land under vines. For our visit, we were able to taste some very high quality wines from the most recent 3 very high quality vintages, from the very ripe 2009, the more classic 2010 and the superb 2011 vintage: Grauburgunder, Weissburgunder and Riesling (locally called Klingelberger), as well as some Spätburgunder. The Gutswein of Grauburgunder and Weissburgunder from high quality estates offer particularly good value, at somewhere between EUR 6 - 8 a bottle ex-cellars! Given the established reputation of Spätburgunders from Baden, the wine list at the Brenners Park seemed a little light on the Spätburgunders from the region: we had hoped to see a wider selection. I wondered if it's because the top Spätburgunders had such strong followings amongst the locals that they were sold out almost as soon as they were released? We managed to visit one weingut (well, just the shop as we did not manage to get an appointment) - Schloss Staufenberg (www.markgraf-von-baden.de) (a weingut owned by the Markgraf von Baden, a relative of the UK's Prince Philip, so we were told, and recently joined the ranks of VDP!!) but sadly the top Spätburgunder was already sold out!


Following are highlights of wines that we did try and would definitely recommend:


2011 Riesling Kabinett Trocken, Schloss Neuweir: located just 5 km outside of Baden Baden, in an idyllic village called Neuweier. We had lunch at this place called Traube, a hotel-guesthouse with a very good restaurant that serves hearty dishes of local cuisine (as well as something as delicate as steamed seafood with an Asian lightly spicy lemongrass sauce) - perfect for Sunday lunches en famille (www.traube-neuweier.de). The friendly chef came out to greet us....in English!


2011 Grauburgunder, Schloss Staufenberg


2011 Grauburgunder, Dr Heger (www.heger-weine.de): great value wine, excellent quality


2011 Weissburgunder, Dr Heger: great value wine, excellent quality

2009 Ihringer Winklerberg, Riesling GG, Dr Heger: pale lemon. Expressive noes of lime blossom, grapefruit, pineapple, honey with a hint of petrol. Racy acidity, medium bodied, dry and crisp long mineral finish. A very elegant wine that will definitely benefit from bottle ageing. Very impresive.

This is the 2011 bottle.

2008 Durbacher Schlossberg, Klingelberger (Riesling), Spatlese Trocken, Schloss Staufenberg: Very expressive nose, full-bodied, and plenty of complexity. Loved the long complex finish. A great wine with the turbot or Dover sole dish. This is a weingut worth looking out for - just became a member of VDP in 2011. We also tried the 2011 vintage at the wine shop - really excellent, plenty of minerality and complexity.








2009 Spätburgunder, Franz Anton, Schwarzer Adler, Franz Keller (www.frankz-keller.de): Bright cherry robe. Savoury and red fruit bouquet of raspberry, redcurrant, black cherry, rose petals, with nuances of underbrush and mushroom. Medium bodied, medium acidity. Supple on the palate. Well-balanced and youthful, if a little lacking in mid palate for now....can do with some time to build out.


Germany has given us some very pleasant surprises since our visit to Hamburg last year, in terms of quality of gourmet food, price and quality ratio of local wines, and of course the German efficiency and organisation. There are a few other wineries from Baden whose wine we would love to have tried......good news is we are already planning next year's visit!  I am also hopeful that we may see some more choices of high quality local Spätburgunders on the wine list at Brenners Park!!!  It's a tempting thought to include German Grauburgunder to our repertoire of everyday white at home, which effectively means Bourgogne Blanc or Village!!!!