Welcome to Ziebarth's Weinstube!

Hello and welcome to the Weinstube!

I am creating this blog as a place to talk, share, rant, argue, complain, and ultimately share in the joy of wine, the world of wine, and all its adjacent beauties and flaw.

My name is Daniel "Danny" Ziebarth and I am a Political Scientist, Legal Scholar, Writer, and Traveler. I must admit, I have no fancy degrees or formal training in the study of wine aside from my accreditation as a Certified Sherry Wine Specialist through the Wine Scholars Guild and Bodegas Lustau (I continue to purchase, taste, enjoy, and discuss the diversity and singularity of Sherry wines). There are many talented people who have done just that, but they are not me. I do, however, love all aspects of wine. I grew up in rural Wisconsin. My grandparents were all farmers. I have been lucky enough to have the beauty of agriculture, terroir, and labor of the earth instilled into my childhood. I have been lucky enough to grow up with storytelling and tradition. Today I enjoy wine because it captures this magic. I believe the best of wine is that it combines the best of people, place,  and history. It is science and art. It is theory and practice. 

The wine world is large, covering nearly every continent. This is, again, one of its strengths. There is much more that brings us together than separates us, and the shared production, consumption, and enjoyment of wine is nearly universal. While I continuously educate myself on this history, present, and future of wine, the focus of this blog itself will be narrower. Specifically, I will focus on wines primarily from Austria, Germany, Alsace, Südtirol, and Switzerland. 

This is is no way a question of quality of the wines and histories coming from other regions, it is instead simply the result that I have come to form my own preferences in wine, as we all have biases, and that even focusing on these areas is a difficult task. I want to provide a breadth of information and interact with those who have a broad view themselves, but at the same time I have to provide some specificity and gain a true sense of place. The name "Weinstube" is a tribute to this as well.

I plan to format different posts into the following categories, which should be pretty self-explanatory:

- This Week at the Weinstube

- Question Time (where I provides some details on winemaking in each of the countries and regions which are the focus of this blog)

- Reflecting on History

- Soil Series

- Tasting Series

- Random Notes

I will certainly have more thoughts in the coming days (months? years? decades? centuries?) on all of these topics, but for now I will leave it as it is. If you are reading this, I already thank you for being here and hope to continue sharing Weinstube chatter with you soon and into the future!