{"id":626,"date":"2005-01-17T12:38:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-17T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/wp\/2005\/01\/17\/dusseldorf-and-mosel\/"},"modified":"2005-01-17T12:38:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-17T16:38:00","slug":"dusseldorf-and-mosel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/2005\/01\/dusseldorf-and-mosel\/","title":{"rendered":"Dusseldorf and Mosel"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Stefan\nmentioned<\/a>,\nwe got together for dinner while I was in Dusseldorf at a\nCompound Document Formats WG<\/a> WG meeting\nlast week.<\/p>\n\n

I only had my crappy cell phone camera with me, so please excuse the\nquality of these shots of our meals;<\/p>\n\n

Stefan’s Pork Knuckle:<\/p>\n\"Stefan's\n\n

Mark’s Deer Ragout:<\/p>\n\"Mark's\n

Can you make out the brussel sprouts and spaetzle? Mmm..<\/p>\n\n

On the “Convert Stefan to a REST believer” front, I think I made good\nprogress. I used to believe that email was a better medium for these\nexchanges since I could take the time to fully understand the other\nparty, and formulate a detailed response. But just a few minutes of\nback-and-forth on the (more or less) transport vs. transfer issue, and I\nhad him going “Hmmm…”. Perhaps at some point he’ll elaborate on that,\nand how much of a nuisance a single bit can be. 8-)<\/p>\n\n

Anyhow, Dusseldorf was quite the amazing city. I didn’t have much in\nthe way of expectations visiting there, believing it was largely industrial\nlike Frankfurt. But I was quite wrong. It’s very affluent and cosmopolitan,\nand its beautiful old town area has the largest pedestrian mall I’ve seen in\nEurope.<\/p>\n\n

I also wasn’t going to get down to Dusseldorf without visiting the famous\nGerman wine region of Mosel<\/a>, home of, IMO,\nthe world’s best white wine. So, arriving early, I did the 3 hour trip, both\nways, via taxi, train and bus, to\nBernkastel<\/a>.\nI was glad I did too, as the day was gorgeous, and the wine fantastic.\nIn particular, the 2003 vintage from\nDr. Loosen<\/a>\n(pic<\/a>)\nwas out of this world! We did a 2003 flight from each of their\nfirst growth vineyards<\/a>,\nand all were of exceptional quality and full of “Mosel-nature”; sweet, lucious\nfruit, with citrous and mineral. Curiously, the offering from\nDr. Pauly<\/a>\nwasn’t nearly so whistle-whetting, which probably had something to do\nwith the abundance of Kabinetts that they turned out, while my preference –\nand Dr. Loosen’s speciality – is their Spatleses and Ausleses. I’d also never\nseen this before, but Loosen also offers a “Goldkapsel” (gold cap) Auslese\nwhich is Auslese without any botrytis affected fruit; pure sweet mosel with\nnone of the sometimes-off-putting and always-tastebud-killing botrytis flavour\n(epitomized by Sauternes). It had all the fruity sweetness of an Auslese with a\nBeerenauslese price, weee! 8-) The gold cap is their own means for labelling it,\nthough the practice of making the wine has been recently picked up by other\nVDP<\/a>\nmember producers.<\/p>\n\n

Some more phone-quality pictures in a yet-to-be-properly-setup gallery are\navailable<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}