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Showing posts from September, 2013

Polish culinary cup with great friends

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I am in Poland to judge the Polish culinary cup (chef of the year) 2013 invited by the organization behind the competition. This was a great fair and competition on a very high standard in all the kitchens and great achievements among the competitors. I am so lucky to be invited and to meet all the passionate chefs from different countries, there is a bright future with chefs without borders; I love you guys and thanks a lot for all the good laughs and deep discussions. Thank you Eva Wojtysiak for taking so good care of me.

Sabines great wines from Pfalz.

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To reflect the land and soil in a wine is not easy and you need to focus and work very hard for this, one that is doing just this is the lovely Sabine Ohler from the weingut J.F.Ohler in Gimmeldinger Pfalz. I just love all of Sabine’s wines and the style she have as a female winemaker borne in to the land and raised in the wine cellar, she knows how to express the tradition nicely blended to suit the modern taste of German wines. All of her wines are dry or with just a dash of sugar to balance the wines that have a very high to medium acidity, great full body and very long aftertaste. Due to that she is not a part of the VDP she can not use the “GG” on her label but the wines are at the same level and everybody knows that “Idig” is one of the best “GG” in Germany. The Riesling “Mandelgarten alte reben” have lush and watering mouthful with great citrusy acidity and long lingering finish. Madame Ohler makes some great red wines as well with the spätburgunder “JFO” on m...

Latvian chefs and fantastic food.

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To be invited as a judge in foreign countries is a true pleasure and great honour for me and I love every second of it and also to meet all wonderful and creative chefs out there. My trip to Riga in  Latvia  last week was an amazing experience in every sense, great competition, excellent young chefs and great food all around, well done guys. Latvia have some great chef talents and a nice working chefs club managed by the lovely Svetlana Riskova head chef at the Tallinn hotel in Riga and their restaurant The lovely lady Rita Stramkale and Kadrija Klesnika among others that took so good hand of me and I am ever grateful for. There are many good restaurants and to just mention a few are Dome Hotel, Biblioteka no 1, Kalku Varti and Vincents among many more. Riga is a big city but the old town centre is just beautiful and to do a long weekend here is easy and well worth. I will be back.  

Rings in Pfalz, some of the best.

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The Pfalz as wine region are in big changes with many young winemakers doing traditional Pfalz wines but in a super modern way with great result that will increase and put more fame to this historic sites. One of the new guys is Andreas Rings of Weingut Rings where he make some very serious wines with his brother as companion and head of the vineyards. Weingut Rings was selected as one of the best 100 producer in the whole of Germany in 2012 and that must be a great achievement by this 26 year old winemaker. The white wines shows great “terroir” and some of the best complexity with absolutely no sugar left in them, fantastic dry wines. But Andreas holy grail is the Spätburgunder where his brilliance show of in the best possible way, magic wines and I am so happy to taste them all. Lots of Pinot makers out there have something to learn from this guy.