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Anthony Hammond (American dad, German mum) runs the Garage Winery just across the river in Oestrich-Winkel.

He calls his wine Sugar-Babe, Rosamunde, Kickstart and Goldmarie, sells them in 0.25 litre bottles as well as the standard 0.75l) he sells olive oil in sewing machine oil cans, honey in tubes and vodka laced with caffeine.

Not yer normal winery.

And it IS in what used to be a garage in the middle of town.

His open courtyard shindigs in Spring and Autumn are legendary – the last one featured a Johnny Cash revival band that – when you closed your eyes – WAS Johnny Cash and  a renegade cooking outfit from Hamburg that produced food beyond description – the “Bloody Hell” burger was sliced medium rare Charolais with a salsa dressing between toasted ciabatta, the Pussy de luxe burger was… chargrilled octopus.

And his wines are seriously good – clean, crisp, well-priced.

Nicest guy, too.

I realised when we got home that he’d given me too much change, so I zipped over on the bike the next day- it’s only 40k or so – to pay him back.

He said “Look mate, honesty has be rewarded” and proceeded to fill up my rucksack with various Sugar-Babe/Rosamunde/Kickstart/Goldmarie minis.

Got them home intact, too.

Tempted, though….

08 Feb This entry was published on 8 February, 2011 at 12:00. It’s filed under Mainz and tagged anthony hammond, garage winery, good guys, NQM, wine. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.