Zum wohl!

Went to the summer wine festival in Aachen, Germany today. This year's event, held annually in the square between the Dom (cathedral) and the Rathaus (town hall), featured about 30 wine growers from the Rheinland-Palatinate region. They're all family enterprises, with each wine grower offering between 8 and 12 different wines for the public to sample, ranging from sekt (sparkling wine) to white and red varietals to dessert wines. That made for a lot of sampling. German wines have come a very long way from the Blue Nun or Liebfraumilch plonk we used to know, and they do very well against the French heavyweights in international wine tasting competitions today. I tried some excellent whites and reds and took note of what they were, but I'll be darned if I can find that scrap of paper today. I enjoyed the wines a tad too much and was too sleepy to blip when I got home.*

A really lovely afternoon. The square was packed with families and groups of friends enjoying the sunshine and feeling jovial. Not a single obnoxious drunk in sight.



*Not enirely sure that was entirely due to the wines I sampled. There was also the matter of taking my son shoe shopping, an experience more grueling than taking my husband clothes shopping.