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Mrs. Dorothee Zilliken
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WB Center: You where mentioning that you just working with one type of grape. Which one is it and why?
Dorothee Zilliken: We are just producing the Riesling grape variety. We think it's more worth to produce it there because we have a Devonian Slate terroir, which is the best condition for growing Riesling. We have very steep mountains vineyards that are between 30 and 60 degrees of steepness. We are only harvesting by hand which is very important for us because then you can safe all the quality of the grapes. Because if you are taking the housing machine and run through the vineyard lines it will also be catching as for example a lot of leaves and the pressure on the grapes is too high. This is the reason why we are only harvesting by hand.
WB Center: How would you describe your wine?
Dorothee Zilliken: We are producing about 10% of dry wines and the rest is medium dry and fruity. So our winery is well known for the fruity sweet and normal sweet wines. Our total amount of grapes is about 11 hectares that are 30 acres.
An example of a dry wine is the Butterfly Riesling which is very food friendly wine. Butterfly is well balanced thanks to the sugar acidity which makes it fit to a lot of different kind of food. If you have a meal with more spiciness then you should take a more sweet wine like.
We have 2 different main vineyards sizes: Saaburger Rausch and Ockfener Bockstein. Saaburger is the town where our winery is located and the other one is Ockfener Bockstein which is only located 4 kms away.
WB Center: We know that your cellar and storage condition is special. Can you mention more about it?
Dorothee Zilliken: We have a very old cellar. It's 100 years old and it's very dark, humid and cold. The humidity is always between 95% and 99% so it very high and looks like a cave that is always dropping.
It's very good for our corks. When we close the cork it stays very soft and gentle which is perfect for the storage conditions. Especially for the normal sweet wines we can store them for: 30, 40 or 50 years in our cork cellar without recorking them. So these corks will always stay in the bottle which is perfect. We are fermenting all our wines in our German oak barrels and not those stainless steel tanks but small barrels. The content is about 1000 liters and is toasted inside giving a flavor vanilla aroma to the wine.
These German barrels are none toasted so they are neutral and not giving any flavors. However, we think that it's worth to work with these German barrels because they are rounding the wine a bit and gives the wine more harmony. From the working point of view, it would be much easier to have these tank steel barrels but we will then miss more taste in the mouth.
WB Center: How would you describe your wines?
Dorothee Zilliken: Our wines are known for the elegance. Wines of our state will not chock you with many types of aromas but are a very silky and fine. You do not necessarily need to combine it with food but can been enjoyed as it is.
WB Center: Where does your name Forstmeister come from?
Dorothee Zilliken: The name comes from our ancestor Ferdinand Geltz who was a Prussian Forester Master which was a nice title on those days. He did from come from a winemaker family. Soon he was responsible for wines and did not just gain good reputation in our region but also for Germany.
He was also one of the founder members of the VDP (Verband Deutscher Prädikats- und Qualitätsweingüter e.V.) that is to say the club of the best winemakers in our area. We have the name Forstmeister Geltz name because his last name was Geltz.
Recommended restaurant & hotel by Dorothee Zilliken:
• Saaburger Hof, Germany: owned by the Diewald family because they have a very large and good wine carte. They do also have the biggest wine carte in the area. The best winemaker from my area is Egon Müller-Scharzhof who has wines from 1920 and owns the winery under the same name.
• Hotel Villa Keller in Saarburg, Germany: which is closed to our river Saar has and you have a beautiful overview of our city towards the castle.
• Casino in Schloss Berg in Nennig, Germany: located in the Nenning village has won Michelin Star
• Le Temple du Gourmet, in Neuhütten, Germany: is far away from the village and everything but has beautiful surrounding to hike and mountain bike or a place just to rest and with peaceful surrounding who needs time for themselves. Here you can also spend the night. The family is also very down-to-earth and kind.
• Manele Bay Hotel in Hawaii: is really relaxing and beautiful
Restaurants that serves Zilliken wines:
• Brandenburger Hof in Berlin, Germany.
• Ritz Carlton in Wolfsburg, Germany
WB Center: Do you see any preference in the type of wines each country chooses?
Dorothee Zilliken: Definitely, for example the US market prefers the fruity selection. As in Hawaii for example since their cuisine is more Asian with hot and spicy flavours, our wines combine very well with their food.
Hawaii's capital city is Honoulou and since my father is called Hanno they usually call the wine Hannoloulou.
Published by Wine & Beverage Center, WB Center