With the "Cellar Selection", the Cologne wine cellar has created its own range for special wines. Managing director Andreas Brensing has now presented the first highly limited finds.
The first three wines in the Cellar Selection: winemakers and retailers appear on the labels on an equal footing
It's a kind of treasure hunt that the team at Kölner Weinkeller has embarked on: Some winegrowers have barrels of exceptional wines that are not bottled because the grape variety does not fit into the estate's programme or the market is too small and not worth the effort. The Cologne wine cellar has bought and bottled precisely these barrels of special wines that are lying dormant at the winegrowers'.
They are strictly limited, numbered editions. They are offered as a "Cellar Selection". Andreas Brensing, managing director of Kölner Weinkeller, has now presented the first three of these rarities. Number one comes from the Rheingau from the Georg Breuer winery. The Riesling stored in the cellar there has never before been bottled as a single vineyard. Brensing was the first to present it to the 80 selected guests.
The Kölner Weinkeller is currently the only retailer in the wine world to produce such an edition with top producers
In the Palatinate, the team from the Cologne wine cellar came across a historic Pinot Noir plot at the A. Christmann winery. According to the wine cellar team, the wine that winemaker Sophie Christmann has created from it can easily hold a candle to the growths from French Burgundy. Almost next door, also in the Palatinate, Andreas Brensing found "Paradies": the name of the parcel says it all: "Paradies" from the von Winning winery in the Palatinate is a complex, sophisticated Sauvignon Blanc that plays in the top league of this grape variety.
These three wines are just the beginning. Andreas Brensing already has his eye on the next barrels: "We want to establish Cellar Selection precisely for this niche, and I am convinced that we will find some more excellent treasures. We already have our eye on the first ones. That's the great thing, that we can do something unusual here in the Cologne wine cellar, that we can make room for the crazy, the special wines."
The Vandermeulen wine trade enjoys a legendary reputation in the wine scene. The company no longer exists. However, individual bottles with a large red dot on the label are said to still be in circulation. The Vandermeulen brothers established the wine trade between 1900 and 1955, securing wines celebrated by wine experts in the great chateaux of Bordeaux and Burgundy, such as the 1918 and 1921 Chateau d'Yquem or the 1947 Chateau Pétrus. The brothers were characterised above all by their patience, as they had the winemakers transport the barrels directly to their home in Ostend, Flanders, where they were left for several years - longer than is usual in the wineries. Before Baron Philippe de Rothschild in the Bordeaux region began bottling the entire vintage himself at the winery, ushering in a new era of wine marketing, the Vandermeulens made great chateaux such as Cheval Blanc famous all over the world.