VOLKER DIEHL: Situation, Situation, Situation.

By Stuart Pigott - last revision: 17.08.26

WHY?

Why should this wine website publish a profile of the Berlin gallery owner Volker Diehl? Doesn’t this story, however it is told, lie too far outside the focus of this site? Well, Volker is such a wine fan that he was the first paying subscriber to this site. But, beyond that there is his love of wine, and his uutterly distinctive approach to the subject.

Just as contemporary art fans look at modern art in a different way to other people, wine freaks approach wine in a different way to the rest of humanity. And - Painful Truth Number 21,736 - I think we have a tendency to arrogantly assume that those people who don’t share our way of thinking and all our conventions can’t really understand wine. And, oh how easily do we forget that enjoying wine has nothing to do with understanding it. On top of that we almost never question our own beliefs and assumptions, much less have much we much awareness of the rigidity of our habits and rituals.

EPPSTEIN - BERLIN - MOSCOW / 1918 - 2025

Door to door Berlin is 5 plus hours journey time from my home in Eppstein close to Frankfurt am Main, but it is more like visiting another planet than another German city. During the Covid Crisis Berlin was my lifeline, the place where I found cultural nourishment, and Volker Diehl was my most important source of that foodstuff. That provided essential fuel for developing my second career as a film and TV scriptwriter. There’s a backstory to this,  which goes back to the mid-1990s when I was still a painter and active in the Berlin contemporary art scene. How did Volker and I drift apart after that?

About 20 years ago I grew weary of the Berlin art scene and Volker spent a lot of time in Moscow during the period when most people in the West were optimistic about Russia becoming some kind of partner, or even an equal. I also visited Moscow during this period and was seduced by what Rammstein called, „die schönste Stadt der Welt!“ the most beautiful city in the world. Of course, Putin and his cabal have dramatically revived the adverserial stance that dates back at least to the forgotten invasion of Russia by Britain, France, America and others in 1918-1920. Were we all too naive? Volker closed his Berlin gallery in 2009 and after the Russiatakeover of Crimea and proxy war in Eastern Ukraine I decided not to visit Moscow again. But back to Berlin...

At the beginning of 2019 Volker asked me to take a look at the wines in his cellar and tell me if they were any good. There were still unopened sixpacks of great Riesling Spätlese and Auslese from producers such as the Nahe State Domaine (today Gut Hermannsberg) and S.A.Prüm in the Mosel from the early 1990s. Some of these bottles were spectacular and Volker was delighted to find that next to some rather normal bottles he had these treasures. At this point I realized that although we very often liked the same kind of wine (note Volker’s complete lack of prejudice against sweet wines) he had a completely different take on those wines to mine. I started wondering what had shaped those differences.

BERLIN / 2026

I meet Volker for something like an interview at Galerie Volker Diehl in the Niebuhrstrasseand and from there we walk to restraurant 0086 in the Bleibtreustrasse, which serves someof the best Sichuan food in Berlin. Volker has to walk slowly, because of a recent knee operation, but having to slow down seems to deepen the conversation. He tells me how a book about Michelangelo first stimulated a serious interest in art, how he studied scultpure in Münster, then art history in Berlin, and how he visited Andy Warhol at The Factory in 1983. That year he took over the contemporary art program at Galerie Folker Skulima in Berlin, changing the gallery name to his own in 1990. It was just a few years later that we first met. 

After we sit down in the restaurant the converation switches to wine and he tells me, „I don’t remember wine names,“ Volker explains, and I remember how whenever he wants to know what I think of a particular he’s encountered he sends me a photograph of the bottle, never just a text. „I’ve drunk some very expensive wines, like Château Petrus, but regardless what wine it is everything depends on the moment, the situation…what is best doesn’t depend on the price.“ He then says how much he enjoyed several older bottles from my cellar and I have to piece together which ones they were from the description of the label and taste: Bergdolt Pfalz  Weissburgunder  Mandelberg GG  2005; Leitz  Rheingau  Riesling  Berg Kaisersteinfels  2005; a magnum of Spätburgunder (aka Pinot Noir) Gräfenhausen  2007 from the young winemaker group Südpfalz ConneXion. None of these are mainstream cult wines.

Then comes a story so fascinating I stop taking notes. „I had a collector friend with a wine cellar, but all the labels were destroyed. So, when we opened the bottles we never knew what the wine was. Of course,not all the bottles were good, but some of them were amazing, also because of the situation.“ Here is the opposite way of experiencing wine to that of the wine scene. We are so fetishistic about it absolutely has to be this bottle that we drink now, and not one of the other millions of possibilities! We are label drinkers, no less than the people we so often accuse of being guilty of crimes against Bacchus.

Now in his groove, Volker switches to English to tell me, „the Russians are all crazy! They love literature, music and prostitutes!“ He particularly remembers a beautiful Russian prostitute called Elena whom he met by chance in a restaurant. „She said that I could have the friends price, just $300. I pushed $400 over the table and told her, „but we don’t go to your hotel room.“ We continued to talk and drink until 6am.“ Situation, situation, situation!

Of course, right now the situation of the wine market isn’t good, but neither is that of the contemportary art market. „Yes, it’s not a good time to sell art, but it's a great time to buy art, because the prices really dropped. I’m really good in a crisis, but I’m bad in the good times. What do you want to drink?“ The food arrives, I order a beer and the latest of my great conversations with Volker continues…

Galerie Volker Diehl

Niebuhrstrasse 2 / 10629 Berlin

Tel.: +49 30 22 48 79 22 / E: info@galerievolkerdiehl.com

www.galerievolkerdiehl.com