The prince was pouring us samples of his wines in the ancient family palace in Wallhausen, in the Nahe region of Germany.
Nahe itself straddles its namesake river, a branch of the Rhine.
The wine tasting -- and many to follow -- was part of an effort by the German Wine Institute to familiarize writers with the wines of the Rhine, rieslings in particular.
The Germans, it seems, have grown tired of having sand kicked in their faces by vintners in Chile, Australia and South Africa who were flooding their domestic market with cheap, but not bad, wines.
Their answer was to upgrade their product -- and their prices -- and start exporting thousands of litres to foreign markets.
So far, the strategy seems to be working.
Back to the prince. He was entertaining visiting wine writers -- I'm not to be included -- and doing a great job of it, when Papa walked in.
That would be Prince Michael zu Salm-Salm, who gave us a tutorial on German tipples, such as his beer theory: The reason beer drinkers get out of hand, he says, is because unlike wine, beer is fiddled with -- manufactured really.
Wines, he pronounces, are a product of nature and so sit better in the belly and do not produce aggression.
The princes gave us eight or nine -- it's hard to keep track -- wines to sample.
All seemed damned good to me. What the other folks -- wines critics -- thought, they kept to themselves.
The scene would be repeated many times over the next few days -- I think we sampled about 100 wines -- reds, whites and roses.
Now, here's a test for anyone thinking of getting married: So they don't get drunk, wine tasters sip the wine, swirl it around their mouths and then spit the remains in to a jug. I'm sorry, but it's really inelegant. If you can stand the sight of a future spouse dribbling plonk into a communal jug over and over, your marriage will probably last.
On with the wine tour, which was coupled with a great sampling of German cuisine, the idea being we could see what wines went well with what foods.
The concept worked well enough until the "spice incident."
Rolf Gast is a rather intense man who has spent a good part of his life finding the right combinations of spice to kick up foods that would then be paired with the perfect wine. He ran us through an elaborate presentation at Vier Jahreszeiten Winzer, a wine co-operative based in Bad Durkheim.
He put an awful lot of work into it.
So that night we headed off to Limburg Abbey, perched high on a hill overlooking the town.
What no one counted on was that Germany's national soccer team was playing in the European Cup that night, and the chef -- who had been fully prepped by Gast -- took off to watch the game, apparently, leaving his wife, who hadn't been brought up to speed on the spices and their usage, holding the bag.
The result was under-seasoned food that left Rolf in a funk. Quite rightfully so. He is, after all, the Sultan of Spice.
Oh well. Some of us bought a couple of cans of his concoctions. Darned good stuff.
The rest of the wine-food tour was a bit of a blur, but some things stand out quite distinctly, particularly the kindness of Germans.
One noteworthy example was when we visited the Winzeller Hex vom Dasenstein in Kappelrodeck, hard by the legendary Black Forest.
Two of our group commented to no one in particular that they loved German bread. (Who doesn't?)
We later took a bus to another winery.
About a half hour in, the local wine queen showed up with a huge basket of bread for us.
And back to the Winzeller Hex vom Dasenstein: After visiting a pavilion that the winery had set on a mountainside, we went back to headquarters.
Halfway down the winery boss ordered our driver to stop, and we ended up at a well that was stocked with beer and bottles of water. The couple who live across the road from the spring restock the booze -- one euro for a bottle of beer.
Just a couple of end notes.
Prince zu Salm-Salm's family name comes from an incident in which an ancestor saved a king and was granted salmon rights along a large stretch of the Rhine.
The family crest is two salmon.
