Every year a group of acquaintances (die Bekannten) in the Weinheim region of Germany gets together for an evening of wine tasting. They rent a bus and head out to G & M Machmer Winery in the town of Bechtheim to taste the current offerings from the vintner himself. I was lucky enough to be invited along this time.

The evening started with a bit of a longish bus ride: We made six "pick-ups" in various small towns and villages between Heidelberg and Viernheim on the way to the winery. In the end, there were 25 of us, eagerly anticipating the wines we were going to taste that evening.

Upon our arrival, Herr Machmer, a third generation winemaker, invited us into the winery's operations building, complete with a new sales room and a display of all the wines they make and sell. We were treated to our first glass of the evening, a sparkling Chardonnay called MM-Secco Deutscher Perlwein Weiss, much like a German "Sekt" or champagne but lighter in flavour and price. This is a light, summer wine to be enjoyed on a hot, sunny day.

Then we were given a brief tour of the wine operations and saw the large, impeccably clean steel drums that most wine is made in today. A few wines are also aged in oak barrels and this is called "im Barrique". The tour was in German but it wasn't difficult to follow some of what was said. All you need is a little knowledge about wine making or to have had a wine tour in English before.

The rest of our evening was spent in the wine tasting room across the driveway from the new operations building. The interior is lovely, old-fashioned German-style with plenty of wood and a central, tiled heater. After being welcomed to the tasting area by the fourth generation of vintners, two-and-half and five-and-a-half years old respectively, each table was given several types of wine to choose from to accompany the traditional German buffet of fresh bread, cheeses and meats. We ate to our hearts content and tried the different wines. The bottles of wine on our table were both halb trocken (half dry) and trocken (dry).

The wine tasting began in earnest after our buffet supper. A wine-tasting sheet was handed out so that we could track which wines we had tasted, liked, and wished to try again in the future. Wines were poured in pairs as listed on the tasting sheet. Always the left glass and the right glass, to compare to each other. All in all, we tasted 19 wines during our evening, from red table wine to a red barrique to a sweet Gewuertztraminer and more.

At the end of our long and enjoyable evening, the vintner and his wife thanked us for visiting their winery and took our orders for any wine we wanted to take home with us. Then we began our journey home on our rented bus. The tasting evening cost 20 euros per person plus a proportionate cost of the bus rental (12 euros per person in this case).

This type of wine-tasting event is a wonderful idea for many reasons: You can taste a large percentage of the wines on offer from a particular winery, enjoy good conversation, food and wine with friends, learn about the making of wine and, very importantly, taste enough wines to get an idea of which ones you like so that you can come back for more.

Some of our favourite wines from G & M Machmer Weingut are:

2007 Dornfelder Rotwein QbA trocken
2007 Schwarzriesling Rotwein trocken
2005 Cabernet Mitos Rotwein trocken - barrique
2007 Gewuerztraminer feinherb
2007 Rieseling Auslese suess (sweet)

G & M Machmer's wines are available directly from the winery as well as from Wein & Praesente Elisabeth Schmitt in Gorxheimertal near Weinheim.

The winery is located at:
Im Rosengarten
67595 Bechtheim
+49(0)6242 915 717