The wine of the Rhine

Never in my life had I been drunk before sunset, but there's a first time for everything. Wine tasting was part of my seven-day journey through southwestern Germany, where wine is as indispensable to the natives as rice is to Thais.

The picturesque Rhine River wends its way along the French and Swiss borders north from Rhineland-Palatinate to Baden-Wurttemberg, and vineyards are everywhere you look.

The grapevines savoured the mild heat of early summer, planters paying careful attention to the new clusters and already making calculations for the harvest in September.

In Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany's oldest viniculture school - the Staatliche Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt fur Wein-und Obstbau Weinsberg - serves a wine cocktail called "Looping", and it turned my afternoon weariness into leisurely delight.

With 6 per cent alcohol, it's not likely to get anyone "loopy", though. The wine is mildly sweet and fruity, with the scent of blackcurrants.

Teacher Rolf Hauser says the state college has about 120 students a year, mostly on two-year programmes. Some learn to make wine barrels, while others delve into the science of viniculture.

Grantschen was our next stop. This leading cooperative annually produces 1.7 million litres of red and white wines, mainly for restaurants and stores in the region. Its old oak barrels and stainless-steel tanks reflect a balance of past and present.

Here we had dinner with Richard Drautz, secretary of the state's economic affairs ministry. He'd left behind his own family wine business, Drautz-Able, to seek political office, but his wife Monika took over his job. She gave us a charming presentation on German wine that stole the show from her beloved husband.

Bernhard Huber's vineyards lie along the steep slopes of Malterdingen, a town located in the foothills of the Black Forest Mountains.

Huber himself walked his Thai visitors through the cellar, where the temperature is carefully maintained at an average 12 degrees Celsius.

Representatives of two other wineries - Dr Heger and Freiherr von Gleichenstein - joined us for a delightful afternoon get-together, although my face was soon flushed after a heady sampling of wines.

The "heavy" dinner featured no fewer than 14 different vintages, including white Reisling and Pinot Blanc and a red Pinot Noir and Grauburgunder.

The welcoming drinks at the Hex vom Dasenstein wine cellar the next morning demanded considerable fortitude for this reporter to stay "on duty".

Hex vom Dasenstein has a story to go with its wine. Centuries ago, a broken-hearted noblewoman appeared on the valley's vine-clad slope and took shelter in a massive rock formation known as the Dasenstein.

There she lived, an outcast, her deviations from religious norms earning her the epithet the "witch of Dasenstein" - Hex vom Dasenstein. It's said she used magic to befuddle anyone who came near her home.

Crossing the Rhine into the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, the official German Wine Route

runs 85 kilometres through a string of rural towns and villages along the hilly Palatinate Forest.

In the town of Kirchheim, Sylvia Benzinger - Germany's Wine Queen of 2005-06 - runs her family's winery with her younger sister Julia. Having studied economics at university, Sylvia took over the business from her parents, grateful to be able to remain at home.

A 20-minute drive further on is Bad Durkheim, where Dirk Renzelmann has vineyards and a restaurant. He got behind the wheel of a tractor and towed his visitors in a covered wagon across the plantation, cheering us with his Zumstein wines.

Growers in the region do nearly all the work by hand, he pointed out, because the steep slopes limit the use of machinery.

The steepest area I saw was in the Ahr Valley, one of the most beautiful districts on the Rhine. Planters often have to pull themselves up the soaring hillsides hand over hand.

Wolfgang Hella bottles his Deutzerhof wine in the town of Mayschoss, with grapes grown in soil renowned for its fertility.

Several days among the vines proved to be an education for me. I'd regarded wine as just another alcoholic drink, but as one local producer explained to me, cultivating grapes is an art form, as is tasting wine.

I learned to hold the glass only by the stem, since the heat of your hand against the bowl of the glass can spoil the wine, and to lift the glass up to my eyes to check if the wine is clear. I was shown how to twirl the liquid in the glass two or three times to bring out the bouquet.

Germans toast one another with the expression zum wohl - "to your health". At the tastings I attended it was all right to drain your glass, the point being to decide on whether you liked the wine, whether by sip or by mouthful.

The region's growers are united in looking beyond Europe to future markets in Asia, where millions of potential customers remain unconverted to the pleasures of wine. Thailand is one country where they hope for success, and they're more than willing to send us plenty - and save us the 12-hour journey there.

Until then, zum wohl!

The writer travelled to Germ-any as a guest of the German-Thai Chamber of Commerce and LTU International Airlines. It was a promotional outing for the exhibition "Germany: Lifestyle & Travel" taking place in November 2008 at Bangkok's Central World Convention Centre.