I have a Beef with Riesling!

Can Riesling carry a meal?

Is the Pope German?

On a recent tour of Germany’s top wine regions, I found myself in Bacharach, in the heart of Mittelrhein, where nearly every promontory overlooking the storied Rhine River boasts a castle, and those that don’t have castles have vineyards, strikingly beautiful vineyards on impossible slopes of up to 70 degrees, their vinerows ascending the mountains rather than crossing them in order to capture sunlight evenly on both sides.

Bacharach lies right along the river, as several small towns do. It has a train station, a few churches, stores offering wines and cuckoo clocks, and of course a castle up the hillside overlooking town. Most importantly for wine lovers, Bacharach has Weingut J. Ratzenberger – and the Rhein Hotel, home of Stübers Restaurant and chef Andreas Stüber.

Jochen Ratzenberger’s winery on the edge of town is built into the hill that grows his vines, the cellars dug 40 meters deep into the hill to keep the wines naturally cool. He took us to the top of these slopes to show us the slate terroir that gives his Rieslings the delicate minerality characteristic of the Mittelrhein. As he explained how the south-facing slopes capture the northern sunlight, church bells rung out from the town below us, their song cascading from the hillsides to the east and west, celebrating nothing in particular (it wasn’t even the hour) except perhaps life itself. And maybe Riesling.

Or perhaps these were dinner bells. At Stüber Restaurant, I ordered the house specialty, Rieslingbräten – a pot roast essentially, marinated for three days in Riesling, mustard, and some other stuff I never quite got clear despite several entreaties to the chef. (He gave me a postcard with a cartoon that roughly describes how the dish is made – it’s that popular.) The meat is then braised with onions in a 150-degree Celsius oven for three hours. Served with its buttery sauce and a mound of spätzle noodles, it was sheer comfort food.

Cooked in Riesling, it of course called for Riesling to wash it down. I gulped the J. Ratzenberger 2005 Steeger St. Jost Grosses Gewächs, which fermented for 11 months and featured yeasty apricot and slate flavors, as well as the 2007 Steeger St. Jost Halbtrocken, more delicate and flowery, with even a hint of lavender, very characteristic of the Mittelrhein. But my favorite with the beef was the weightier 2007 Bacharacher Wolfshöhle Spätlese, which offered apricot, pear, and acacia honey with a mineral oil texture and a long, lovely finish.

I never once looked around for a red wine.

Back home, the memory of this meal – which ended in the restaurant kitchen watching Germany defeat Austria in the European soccer qualifying round – has me digging my spätzle maker out of the closet and searching for Rieslings in the wine stores.