Candidate Statement of Carl Willner (for Chapter President and Secretary) Carl has been a member of the German Wine Society for over 30 years and a member of the Chapter board for fourteen years since 2012, having previously served as a director and as Chapter Vice President before being elected Chapter President in the spring of 2015. Carl has also served as Secretary of the chapter since 2019, accepting formal election to that position as well in February 2020, in the absence of another candidate to handle this position. He is also now serving, since June 2017, as one of the two Vice Presidents of the National GWS Board, and since October 2022, as Secretary of the National GWS Board. Having the dual responsibilities of President and Secretary combined in one board member, though more work, has helped with efficient event planning. In December 2025, Carl was awarded the GWS Silver Medallion with approval of the National GWS President. This medallion recognizes demonstration of superior knowledge of German wines, and was based on Carl’s work in developing the new Silver Medallion test and updating the GWS National website.
During the past fifteen years, Carl has been responsible for planning numerous GWS events, and has recently led our Chapter through its most challenging period, the coronavirus pandemic during which we were not able to hold in-person events for over a year, operating for several months virtually on Zoom.
- In 2017, Carl organized the 40th Anniversary celebration of the GWS nationwide in Washington at the German Embassy, Cosmos Club and Elizabeth’s on L, the first time we had held such a national event in a decade, and he has worked to build closer relations between our Capital Chapter and our counterparts in other cities. Similarly, in October 2022, Carl organized the 45th Anniversary celebration of the GWS nationwide in Washington at the German Embassy, at which two more members and officers of our chapter, Christian Schiller and Ken Belsley, were elected to the National GWS Board.
- Carl has also organized a wide variety of other events for the chapter including:
- The most recent Holiday Dinners at the Cosmos Club in December 2018-19, and 2021-25.;
- Four tastings at the Embassy of Luxembourg with the Ambassador personally presenting his or her country’s wines;
- The Potomac Wine Cruises in July 2021-25;
- The New Vintages tastings at King Farm in September 2021, April 2023, June 2024 and May 2025 (with Dave Wendler);
- Five Spargelfests and several Oktober Weinfests at the German Embassy including the dinners in September 2023, May 2024 September 2024 and June 2025 with the new Embassy chef;
- Other Spargelfest dinners at Café Mozart;
- The Mosel/Moselle themed Oktoberfest with wines of France, Luxembourg and Germany in October 2014, and another Mosel-themed Oktober Weinfest in October 2019, as well as the Oktober Weinfest covering multiple regions held in King Farm in October 2025;
- Two events to introduce up-and-coming German winemakers to the GWS, the Richard Böcking winemaker event in November 2015, and the Carl Ehrhard tasting in November 2018. Carl also worked with Annette Schiller to plan the Weingut Rebholz tasting at the German Embassy in January 2025.
German wines have long been a part of Carl’s life – his grandparents from Bavaria ran a German restaurant in upstate New York – so the German Wine Society naturally became a part of his life in Washington. During his service as President, Carl has overseen our return to the German Embassy for events after renovations there, and the strengthening of our contacts with the Embassy, including our participation with Germany in the annual EU Open House which was revived in 2022. He has also promoted the development of our chapter website which gives us the crucial ability to register for events electronically using Paypal, concentrated our glasses and other equipment in a single storage facility in 2019, worked with other directors on the move of the chapter wine cellar in 2020 to a professional storage facility, and supported our first uses of Zoom for virtual events during the pandemic before in-person events resumed in July 2021. Carl has also led outreach to new members, which resulted in chapter membership more than doubling over the five years preceding the recent pandemic, and, after a temporary decline in 2020, rebounding to close to former levels. Carl has encouraged creative ideas for non-traditional events, such as Jim Palanchar’s Austro-Hungarian Empire tasting in 2017, German non-Riesling whites tasting in 2019 at Old Europe, and red wines dinner at Café Mozart in 2021, the Klaus Wittauer Austrian wine luncheon at Bazins in Vienna, VA in 2019, the pairing of Asian foods with German wines at the Schiller home in 2023, and comparative tastings of German wines and those of other countries. Working with Karen Stokes, Carl has helped to plan our chapter’s first virtual events, the successful Holiday Gathering on Zoom in 2020, and the Birthday of Riesling, Christian Stahl tasting and Konstantin Frank tastings in 2021 and 2022, as well as the Membership Meetings which have continued online.
Carl looks forward to continuing to lead our chapter into the future, and building on the past five successful years, in which we recovered from the setbacks of 2020 when we were able to hold few events. Carl’s goals include holding several interesting and educational events each year (whether virtual or live), maintaining good relationships with the German Embassy, recruiting new board members for open seats and continuing to maintain our finances and membership at sustainable levels. In the coming year, Carl anticipates planning and working with other members to develop several diverse events, including themed wine events, elegant dinners and less expensive in-person tastings attracting more members, and beginning planning for the 50th Anniversary of the GWS in 2027. Carl will, as always, work to ensure that the German Wine Society remains accountable and responsive to the interests of its members and conducts its events safely.
Candidate Statement of Christian Schiller (for Chapter Vice President) Christian Schiller has been a member of the German Wine Society since he came to the USA in 1983 and a member of the Capital Chapter Board since 2010. He has a broad background in international finance and economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Mainz, Germany. Before his retirement in 2010, he worked for almost 30 years at the International Monetary Fund. With his retirement, he started to write about wine and was accepted by the International Federation of Wine and Spirits Journalists and Writers. His main outlet for his writing is his daily wine blog “schiller-wine,” but he has also published in “Falstaff,” “Weinfeder” and other journals. Many of his publications are on German wine. He has organized many interesting wine events and plans to continue to do so. In 2022, Christian Schiller was elected to the German Wine Society’s National Board of Directors. In December 2025, Christian was awarded the GWS Silver Medallion. This level of membership, which recognizes demonstrated superior knowledge of German wines, was conferred on the basis of Christian’s work to develop the modernized Silver Medallion test and to update the National GWS website, including providing an article on the new 2021 German Wine Law.
Candidate Statement of Ken Belsley (for Chapter Treasurer) Dr Belsley has been a member of the German Wine Society for over 30 years. He has served on its board as Treasurer since 2019, and previously as a director and vice-president. He first became acquainted with German wine as a graduate student, and joined the society after moving back to the Washington, DC area. Dr Belsley grew up in the DC area and enjoys the many activities that this region has to offer, especially those of the German Wine Society. I look forward to continuing my support of the Society in the role of Treasurer.
Candidate Statement for Karen Stokes (for Director and Cellarmaster) I have been a member of the German Wine Society for approximately nine years. My first introduction to the Capital Chapter came after taking a course on German Rieslings at a wine conference where I met Mike and Geri Fritze. They were participating in the same class and suggested that if I was truly interested in learning more about German wine, I should join the German Wine Society. I joined and then ran and was elected to the Board in 2020. My background is in finance, not in wine. I worked for 26-1/2 years for a local TV station, WDCA-TV, where I eventually worked my way up to Director of Finance. I retired from there in 2007 and joined Global Finance with Marriott International as a Senior Staff Accountant. I enjoyed my 13 years with Marriott in both the General Accounting position and as a member of our Global Finance Social Committee. But due to the unfortunate travel impact of the covid pandemic, I chose to also retire from Marriott in August 2020. I have been a member of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the American Wine Society since the late 90’s. Over the years I have done approximately 23 wine presentations of my own for that Chapter. Since 2009 I have worked as Assistant to the Publishers of the International Wine Review operating out of McLean, Virginia. In my current retirement status, I have had the opportunity to write 4 short articles on Maryland wineries for their publication and I am currently considering a report on Cabernet Francs from around the world. For about 14 years, I have been a volunteer with the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition which focuses on wineries/wines along the East coast of the United States; and I have served as cellar master for them at their annual wine competition. In 2023 I was elected to their Board of Directors. A few years ago, I was able to represent the German Wine Society as a volunteer at the EU Open House to pour German Sekt. Since late 2020, when GWS acquired a Zoom account, I have worked on our online events as an administrator and/or organizer. Originally, I suggested the Zoom Holiday Gathering in December 2020 to have the opportunity to reconnect with our fellow GWS members who, like all of us, were observing corona virus lockdown. That Zoom account made it possible to hold our Membership meeting online [Feb 2021], the virtual Birthday of Riesling party [March 2021], and an online wine tasting with Christian Stahl [April 2021]. I understand the Stahl event was the first time the Chapter was able to do a tasting with a German winemaker directly from the winery. I also partnered with another GWS member for online presentations of Dr Konstantin Frank’s wines from the Finger Lakes in 2021 and again in 2022. Over time I have also helped with the food pairings with some of the GWS wine presentations, and more recently poured & discussed the wines we were serving for Oktoberfest 2025 [ I also provided the German music]. I was also part of the German Wine Society Committee tasked to find a commercial storage facility for our 200+ wine bottle inventory. Once a location was confirmed and the wine moved to Domaine Storage in DC, the work of the Cellarmaster became more administrative regarding the wine bottle inventory. I was willing to take on that position and maintain the wine inventory list in Excel. Now I work with Carl Willner as well as any presenters or event organizers to retrieve wines, return unused bottles or verify our cellar inventory for each Chapter event. I hope to serve again as a Director and Cellarmaster on the Board for 2026. And I look forward to planning and participating in monthly events as well as offering ideas for potential virtual and/or in-person wine tastings.
Candidate Statement of Klaus Teuter (for Director, also serving as Webmaster) Klaus Teuter is a 33-year member of the German Wine Society’s Capital Chapter, joining after coming to the USA from Germany. He has made his wine experience available to other members through presentations at chapter meetings, and has frequently given the chapter access to the clubroom in his Van Ness apartment building for a variety of events, including 2023’s New German Wine Law tasting, the Pinots and Riesling-Chenin Blanc tastings in 2024, and the Comparative Rieslings and Alto Adige tastings in 2025. At the chapter Membership Meeting in 2023, Klaus agreed to take on the challenging role of Webmaster for the chapter, when the former Webmaster stepped down from the position and no replacement had been identified. As a result, he was elected as a Director as well at the meeting to fill the open position on the Board. Klaus is now running to serve on the Board again as Director, and will continue serving as Webmaster as well to maintain the vital website for the chapter, at least until a more permanent Webmaster can be found. He will, however, be pleased to transfer this responsibility to an accomplished Webmaster or an aspiring one willing to learn the role.
Candidate Statement of Maria So (for Director)
Maria has been a member of the German Wine Society (GWS) for over 15 years and previously a member of the Capital Chapter German Wine Society Chapter Board of Directors for six years. In December 2025, Maria received the Silver Medallion at the Capital Chapter annual Holiday Dinner at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. Maria was recognized for her knowledge on German wines, German wine grapes, grape growing regions, and the new German wine laws. Between 2018 and 2023 Maria served as the web master and maintained the Capital Chapter German Wine Society website. She worked on the website principally for announcing the chapter wine events, collecting registrations for events and payments through PayPal, documenting website problems, and providing other information to the members (pictures of events, Meetup postings, wine blog info about events of other chapters or other interesting wine developments, etc.). Her additional duties including installations of software patches that were used to produce the website. Maria has a broad engineering background in satellite operations and space flight mission safety assurance. She worked for over 20 years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. In her role as a Senior Executive Services (SES) at NASA she held various leadership positions in Science and Engineering Directorates including technical management for the Hubble Space Telescope missions. Maria holds a BA degree from University of California, Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Computer Science from University of Calgary, Canada. Maria is very impressed with the German Wine Society Board members and all the volunteers who make the events so enjoyable and affordable. She is willing to contribute her part to the continued success of the Capital Chapter German Wine Society.
Candidate Statement of Annette Schiller (for Director)
I herewith express my interest in joining the board of the German Wine Society (GWS) Capital Chapter. I would love to bring my profound knowledge of the world of German wine and close connections with the German vintner’s scene to the table focusing on wine education and promoting German wine and the German Wine Society in the capital region. I have been a member of the GWS for more than 30 years with interruptions due to overseas assignments. However, I have been involved with wine and particularly German wine even longer. My fascination with wine goes back to my student days at the University of Mainz, Germany where I studied macroeconomics. Mainz is one of the 10 Wine Capitals of the world and sits in the middle of several wine regions. The most affordable drink in the student hangouts was wine. I became curious what wine is all about and chose oenology as the mandatory General Studies course. After this course ended, I wanted to delve deeper into the world of wine and took evening classes at the Community College in nearby Wiesbaden until I graduated from Mainz University with a Masters in Macroeconomics. I honed my tasting skills through weekend winery visits in the regions around Mainz, vacation trips to other German wine regions and to wineries in France. Later whenever time allowed it I attended occasional classes at the renowned Geisenheim Oenological University in the Rheingau wine region in Germany. Over the years I organized and presented many educational wine seminars for the German Wine Society Capital Chapter and two for the Philadelphia Chapter. I am also very active conducting educational wine seminars for various chapters of the American Wine Society (AWS), at the yearly AWS National Conference, the Washington Wine & Cheese Seminar, the German Embassy, Goethe Institute, and various other groups. In December 2025, I was awarded the GWS Silver Medallion. This level of membership, which recognizes demonstrated superior knowledge of German wines, was conferred on the basis of my numerous presentations to the GWS on various topics related to German wines. By requests of wine lovers in 2010 I started organizing and leading wine tours to all 13 wine regions in Germany and to Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhône Valley, Loire Valley and Alsace in France and to Tuscany and Trentino-Alto Adige in Italy.
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If voting by mail rather than in person at the Membership Meeting, please detach this ballot and mail in to Carl Willner, GWS Capital Chapter President and Secretary, at 1014 Reserve Champion Drive, Rockville, MD 20850. Ballots must be submitted by February 16, 2025 and received before the Membership Meeting to be counted. Nominations for alternative candidates for any of these positions are due by February 7, 2025, and should be communicated by email to the Secretary, carl.willner1@verizon.net .
Ballot for German Wine Society Capital Chapter 2026 Board Election
_____ Carl Willner (for Chapter President)
_____ Carl Willner (for Chapter Secretary)
_____ Christian Schiller (for Chapter Vice President)
_____ Ken Belsley (for Chapter Treasurer)
_____ Karen Stokes (for Director, also serving as Cellarmaster)
_____ Klaus Teuter (for Director, also serving as Webmaster)
_____ Maria So (for Director)
_____ Annette Schiller (for Director)
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