Last column

Picture from one of the first columns; topic: "Great tastings or first-class state funerals" (Photo: P. Züllig)

Utz Graafmann, the founder and managing director of Wein-Plus, trusted me, gave me the opportunity to "think outside the box" in Europe's largest wine network and to record whatever thoughts, questions, experiences came up in everyday life. He never censored, questioned or rejected anything. The column appeared as I wrote it, even if it was below or beside the core business. For this freedom of expression and foolishness I am grateful, incredibly grateful. Perhaps it was also this rather rare, unconventional openness, outside the routine course of business, which gave Wein-Plus a little piece of uniqueness, specialness, otherness. Recently, I was invited to a renowned winemaker for a presentation of his wines, combined with an excellent meal - five courses - and a cellar tour. At the end, I still wanted to know why I had come to this honour, because I don't exist on his client list, and I haven't worked as a journalist for a long time. He said with a laugh: "You know, I always read your column at Wein-Plus because it is so pleasantly different, so very different from the standardised wine journalism". This made me think again in the otherwise so routine wine business (how many visits to wine cellars and how many wine presentations have I already experienced!) and inspired me to my own thoughts, reflections and insights, which I wanted to include in my next column. It didn't come to that. The column is discontinued, now.

Picture of the last (planned) column; topic: Cicero was not only a Roman politician% philosopher and famous orator. Cicero is also one of the best wineries in Switzerland. (Photo: P. Züllig)

Neither the winegrower nor I had any idea that this was something like the final word in this column. Not precisely formulated, simply taken from everyday life, chattered away, out of politeness, out of embarrassment, out of one's own experience. Who knows for sure? For me, however, this was the most beautiful praise I have received in all these years - in relation to the column. I wanted to bring a piece of everyday life, everyday wine life, into the often unadorned core business, and often - it seems - I succeeded. I never had to worry about ratings, market shares, expenses and the famous cost/benefit ratio. The only routine was the appointment, every 14 days it had to come, the brilliant idea. Often it came, often not, often I was well on trend, often not. All that didn't occupy me much, I noted, thought, wrote and photographed. There were about 20,000 photographs with which I tried to illustrate my thoughts. My camera was always with me when I was - wherever and however - at the wine. I have included about 1,000 of these pictures in my column: Pictures around the topic of wine. So by far the most of them I shot "for stock", they are now resting in my archive. Nevertheless, I was always in a state of image distress. Thoughts and words are often difficult to capture in pictures. Pictures always have a life of their own, not much different from what my column had. What was important for me was the "picture behind the picture", or the "story behind the story".

Left: me in the vineyard - nine years ago% when I decided% to write this column. Right: me today - on the road with my camera on wineries in South Africa. (Photos. P. Züllig)

And it does not always fit into the core business of a company. Nothing helps, not even a wonderful glass of wine, not even the slight wistfulness of saying goodbye and certainly not bleak thoughts about all that still needs to be done (or said) and that has not been done (or said). What remains for me is to thank all those who have praised and rebuked me over the years, who have endured and taken notice of me for nine years here at Wein-Plus, who have written to me (mostly privately) and who - there are many - have become good friends. I have also made a few "enemies", to whom I am particularly grateful. For me, they are not "enemies", but rather people, readers, who have forced me to "think outside the box", to question much of what I had taken for granted, to redefine it, to find myself anew.

Wümmle 2014 - Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris berries on the same grape (Photo: P. Züllig)

In my first, column 1, I wrote: "I don't know a lot of things (yet), but what I write here I have always experienced myself. Experiences are subjective, but that doesn't make them any less true! We can define and describe the world - including the world of wine - but we can only experience it subjectively." This simple but fundamental thought came to me during the grape harvest in the vineyards of the Bündner Herrschaft (Eastern Switzerland), where probably the best Pinot Noirs in Switzerland grow and where I am busy again at the moment, year after year: "Wimmlen, the Graubünden people say - and they don't just mean the grape harvest, they also associate with it their whole love for the vine and the wine. Wimmle is not just harvesting, it is selection." This is how I understood my column. "The good berries are separated from the bad. Grape by grape, berry by berry. This is the only way to finally become that Pinot which is among the best." It wasn't much different in the column. Auslese: Thought by thought, experience by experience, image by image. Whether the best has come out of it is not for me to decide, it is for you to decide.

Cordially
Yours sincerely