I promised when describing last Friday's wine of the week an update on the situation regarding the unwanted giant motorway bridge over the beautiful Mosel valley near Ürzig. (Click on the Mosel bridge tag below to follow the entire story.)
As you can read in this latest despatch on the Mosel bridge blog, the bridge construction has so far been delayed by a year because the calculations on which it was based were out of date. Anti-bridge campaigners have taken the government of Rheinland-Pfalz to court and requested that the new calculations be made public under freedom of information requirements.
The court was somewhat taken aback by the extent of public and media interest in this case but last week, after a shorter deliberation than expected, sided with the government, which argued that these calculations were too commercially sensitive to release. The campaigners are currently considering lodging an appeal since they believe that there should be public debate of the issues.
Meanwhile, Mosel resident and most active anti-bridge campaigner Sarah Washington sends the following more upbeat message:
'I thought you and your readers might enjoy this fermentation soundscape, made by my partner Knut Aufermann... (and produced by our joint art partnership Mobile Radio).
'Every autumn thousands of wine cellars in the Mosel valley turn into magnificent
sound installations. As freshly pressed grape juice starts fermenting in barrels, the escaping gas bubbles through glass and ceramic u-pipes, each nascent wine going off at its own speed.'
'Mobile Radio set up seven microphones in the wine cellar of biodynamic winemakers Rudolf and Rita Trossen in the village of Kinheim to capture and broadcast these fermentation sounds, documenting the work of yeast turning juice into wine. The following recording was made from midnight to 1 am on 5 November 2013. It was part of a 17-hour live broadcast which went out at various times on nine radio stations around the world – filling the night with sonorous bubbling.
You can hear the soothing sounds of fermentation by clicking on the orange disc below.