How I met Raimund Prum

Pouring for Raimund Prum at a vertical tasting of six vintages of his Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese at Brie & Bleu


One year it snowed heavily the day of the Mohegan Sun winefest. At the time I drove a 1987 Ford Ranger that had already been hit once so I figured, what's the worst that can happen? I drove down to the old Sub Cafe on Bank street and picked up some nice heavy pieces of rubble from around back. I had about 800lbs of cement block and yankee granite in the back of that truck as we crept up 395 on our way to the Sun. I had Ryan Connelly with me. He was front of the house at Brie & Bleu at the time and I had gotten free tickets to the show through the wine shop. We had low expectations about the wine we would see, but we had the will to live and hoped to do the type of drinking associated with the words open and bar.

The Mohegan Sun Ballroom is as unpleasant a place to taste wine as I can imagine. Bright light, synthetic carpet, fat Americans milling around embarrassing themselves. Only this time, there was no one there because of the snow. A show ready for 5000 had maybe 500 people. I was set upon immediately by salespeople, sales managers, brand managers, key account managers, and various others attempting to ply their trade, the poor bastards. I was dragged through several "important brands" and through two dozen $100 Cabs until they all tasted the same. My tongue now burnt, I excused myself

Then I saw Raimund, all 6'4'' of him with bright red hair. So I stumbled up to him and said "I've never liked Riesling, I know I should, I've just never gotten it. You are supposed to be one of the great winemakers of the Mosel, impress me with your wine." And he did. He walked me through QBA, Kabinett, Spatlese, and Auslese. He told me about the steep vineyards of schist, the hand harvesting, about the purity and clarity, the tension and transparent nature of The Queen Of White Grapes.

Then I looked at him and asked a question I'd been asking all day with disappointing results."Do you have anything under the table?" If you go to a wine show, any wine show, this is not a bad question to ask. Invariably there are people there who have brought wines to show their best clients, the press, each other, whoever, but not you. Now, you can ask to see this wine, but you can't flinch. You have to look them right in the eye and ask with the gravity of someone who can put money in their hands.

Raimund bent down and pulled out a 375ml bottle of 1998 Graacher Himmelreich Ice wine. His corporate lackey handler Max gave a little twitch and started to sweat as Raimund poured. At the time this was the greatest wine I had ever had, and I'm not sure it still isn't. Produced from grapes frozen in a quick hard frost, and harvested from a vineyard of steep slate, by hand, and crushed while the water is still trapped in ice crystals at -5C, it was a wine of vast depth, with penetrating acidity, concentrated fruit and intense minerality. I polished off the pint, (I can be very persuasive in situations like this), then I politely asked how much something like that cost, as I would be interested in buying some for the store.

"It's expensive" says Max
"How expensive" says I
"$355 for 375ml" says Max
"I'll take six" says I
"I don't know if we have six" says Max
"Find Six" says I

I thanked Raimund for his time and told him if he was ever in New London to call me. "We can do an event at the bistro, we can do for the public what you just did for me, we can make them understand. I mean look around you, we are swimming in a sea of liquid shit, it's only redeeming quality is it contains alcohol." Raimund thanked me for my enthusiasm, and was polite as I excused myself as only a German can be polite when the person he is speaking with is making little sense.

I moved on and looked for Ryan, who had been very busy. In my absence he had procured a Trade Laminate that gave him full access to the show, but more importantly the ability to lift as much wine as he could carry without so much as raising an eyebrow. After scouring the show, he had compiled a few cases of expensive wine that he intended to walk out with. There were four cases, too much to carry alone, so I was recruited into a life of crime once again. We loaded up and walked out like we owned the place.

The Mohegan Sun is one of the biggest Casinos in the world. That is to say it was a long walk to the car, a long walk drunk over busy carpets and through ringing bells and flashing lights. I don't remember what happened next but I remember we were running and I was very aware of the cameras. And then Ryan fell, hard. And wine hit the floor, hard. I remember standing over him face down on the floor, 24 bottles of wine splayed out in front of him. I paused just a second, and then decided this was one of those times when you just keep moving.

So I did, and I found my truck, loaded with cement as it was, and put the two cases in the cab. Then I realized that I didn't even want this wine. Stealing bad! What would Buddha do? I had to get rid of it! So I started making phone calls, drunk phone calls. "Hey do you want any wine, I got a couple of cases of wine and I have to get rid of them right now or I might have bad Karma." I reached Kat Murphy and she agreed to help by drinking what she could. So I piloted my truck downtown, and rang the bell at the Hygenic Art Co-op. Kat answered, I went up, Greg Bowerman joined us and that is all I remember from that night.

In the morning I went to work on my day off just to drop off business cards I had collected and make brief notes on wines I had tasted the day before. The phone rang and I answered It. A strange man with a strange voice said things I didn't understand. Then he just kept repeating "It's me, It's Raimund!"

"Hey man,thanks for the wine yesterday.Where are you calling from?"
"I'm In New London!"
"Why?"
"I'm at the train station I'm going to New York, can I come by and see the store?"
"Yeah, man I'll be right there"

So I went down and picked him up, in my truck full of rubble, and brought him to the store, which he loved. The next time he was in the States we did a massive vertical Spatlese tasting from Wehlener Sonnenuhr for about twenty customers. I came to understand and love Riesling all the more. It is the perfect lens by which to examine terroir, each vintage original and unique. When he saw the Ice wine on our shelf he picked it up and said reverentially, "This wine will last one hundred years, maybe more"

That is how I met Raimund Prum

Ryan Connelly turned up two days later. He had lost his wallet, his keys, his glasses and his shoes. He had come to on a bench in a hallway at the casino not remembering how he got there or why.




For photos of Wehlener Sonnenuhr click on Riesling tag or see a Quick Defense of Riesling