As Stefan mentioned, we got together for dinner while I was in Dusseldorf at a Compound Document Formats WG WG meeting last week.
I only had my crappy cell phone camera with me, so please excuse the quality of these shots of our meals;
Stefan’s Pork Knuckle:
Mark’s Deer Ragout:
Can you make out the brussel sprouts and spaetzle? Mmm..
On the “Convert Stefan to a REST believer” front, I think I made good progress. I used to believe that email was a better medium for these exchanges since I could take the time to fully understand the other party, and formulate a detailed response. But just a few minutes of back-and-forth on the (more or less) transport vs. transfer issue, and I had him going “Hmmm…”. Perhaps at some point he’ll elaborate on that, and how much of a nuisance a single bit can be. 8-)
Anyhow, Dusseldorf was quite the amazing city. I didn’t have much in the way of expectations visiting there, believing it was largely industrial like Frankfurt. But I was quite wrong. It’s very affluent and cosmopolitan, and its beautiful old town area has the largest pedestrian mall I’ve seen in Europe.
I also wasn’t going to get down to Dusseldorf without visiting the famous German wine region of Mosel, home of, IMO, the world’s best white wine. So, arriving early, I did the 3 hour trip, both ways, via taxi, train and bus, to Bernkastel. I was glad I did too, as the day was gorgeous, and the wine fantastic. In particular, the 2003 vintage from Dr. Loosen (pic) was out of this world! We did a 2003 flight from each of their first growth vineyards, and all were of exceptional quality and full of “Mosel-nature”; sweet, lucious fruit, with citrous and mineral. Curiously, the offering from Dr. Pauly wasn’t nearly so whistle-whetting, which probably had something to do with the abundance of Kabinetts that they turned out, while my preference – and Dr. Loosen’s speciality – is their Spatleses and Ausleses. I’d also never seen this before, but Loosen also offers a “Goldkapsel” (gold cap) Auslese which is Auslese without any botrytis affected fruit; pure sweet mosel with none of the sometimes-off-putting and always-tastebud-killing botrytis flavour (epitomized by Sauternes). It had all the fruity sweetness of an Auslese with a Beerenauslese price, weee! 8-) The gold cap is their own means for labelling it, though the practice of making the wine has been recently picked up by other VDP member producers.
Some more phone-quality pictures in a yet-to-be-properly-setup gallery are available.
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