GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS...

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1 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 1 sur 49 Germany In the public eye, the story of German wine usually begins and ends with Riesling. Contents 1. Setting the Stage 2. Origin of the 1971 Germany Wine Law 3. The 1971 German Wine Law Today 4. The VDP 5. The Grapes of Germany 6. Winegrowing Regions of Germany Sommeliers and wine critics, well acquainted with its charms and severity, perpetually fight its underdog status, waging a long information campaign to educate casual wine drinkers that not all German Riesling is sweet. It s a versatile grape in terms of sugar: Riesling offers a little or a lot of sweetness or lacks it completely. We announce its purity, its effortless expression of terroir, its usefulness as a foil for many styles of cuisine, its ability to age magnificently in the cellar. Certainly no country in the world is more tied to the fortunes of Riesling than Germany, which grows almost half of the world s total supply. But even as the variety finally ascended to

2 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 2 sur 49 become the Germans most planted grape in the last days of the 20th century, the country has a richer field of varieties than the stereotype suggests and the Germans love drinking dry wines! (From 1985 to 2015, the percentage of total German wines vinified dry shot up from 16 to 46%.) Today, a sommelier well-versed in Germany s offerings should understand its trocken styles, its noble sweet wines, everything in between, red wines, Silvaner, Pinot Blanc, and other grape varieties coming from a diverse set of growing regions and soils, wrapped up in tradition, reclaimed by modern voices, defined in wine law but often exemplified in extralegal categories, rendered obscure by the fearsome constructs of its own language, and Ah, well. Achtung! Setting the Stage Vitis vinifera arrived in Germany with the Romans, whose legionnaires crossed the Alps over 2,000 years ago and extended their eastern frontier to the Rhine River, far from the traditional bases of viticulture in their Mediterranean homeland. Germanic tribes adopted the culture of th vine, Charlemagne s Franks spread viticulture east of the Rhine in the late 8th century, and monastic orders of the church acted as its custodians through the medieval period and into the modern age. Just as in Burgundy, many of Germany s greatest vineyards were first devised and planted by monks, and the Cistercians introduced the cultivation of Riesling and Pinot Noir, Germany s most important modern grape varieties. The vine s strongholds in Germany shrunk considerably by the 16th and 17th centuries, whittled down by war, a suddenly cooling climate, and the social and religious upheavals of the day. Germany s wine culture reemerged in the 18th century, controlled by clerics and princes, and Riesling shot forward as a premier variety. Vineyard ownership migrated to the private sector completely in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which inspired liquidation of church holdings in Germany by the early 1800s, and a golden era for German wine dawned. Rare, noble sweet wines arrived as a currency for the fine wine traders of London, and the great sweet wines of the Middle Rhine region fetched greater prices than the best reds of Bordeaux by the end of the century. Hock, already in regular English usage by the 1800s to indicate wines from the Middle Rhine, expanded to become a generic term for German wines. A classic British list of the day may have offered Claret, Port, Sherry, Hock, and eventually Moselle by the end of the 1800s, fruity and crisp white wines from the Mosel River region evolved as a category distinct from generic Hock.

3 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 3 sur 49 But dark times were ahead. The arrival of American-born grapevine diseases and the annual struggle with a reliably cold climate spurred interest in viticultural science and the development of hardy new varieties. New research stations sprouted throughout Germany, and with them came new grape crossings varieties obtained for reasons other than wine quality which would multiply and spread throughout Germany by the mid-20th century. Phylloxera, present since 1872, spread in force after the First World War, clearing the way for the adoption of Müller- Thurgau and its contemporaries. The two world wars scarred and transformed the German wine landscape. In the First World War, French regions saw more actual battle than German winegrowing areas, but German workers were at the front, not in the vineyard. After the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 and the subsequent loss of political privilege for the German nobility, many of the old aristocratic wine estates entered a period of slow decline. Exports plummeted after the war as the French and British boycotted German products, Hock included. Meanwhile, the lucrative Russian and American markets closed due to revolution and prohibition, respectively. In the period between the wars, Germany s wine industry turned inward. Weinpropaganda appeared in the 1920s, featuring German soldiers touting white German wines, and a 1930 wine law limited the importation of foreign wines. But all would pale to the impact of World War II. The Nazis drove out the Jews, who accounted for 60 to 70% of the wine merchant trade, and ended the wine auctions that had long been a primary sales mechanism for quality wines. The Nazis took the best (and sweetest) wines for themselves. As the tide turned against Germany, workers died and vineyards sustained bombing raids. At the end of World War II, international boycotts commenced, the country was cleaved in two, and the German vineyard had shrunk to fewer than 50,000 hectares of vines. But times change. In the 1950s, the German agricultural sector rebounded. New grape crossings appeared. New winery technologies took hold and electricity appeared in cellars. German wine became synonymous with sweet and cheap. To English-speaking countries, Liebfraumilch became the most recognizable and reliably sweet tasting German wine category. (The Blue Nun brand, originating with a 1921 vintage of H. Sichel Söhne Liebfraumilch, was created by a Jewish merchant family who fled the Nazis in 1938 and returned at the war s end.) In the post-war period, the Flurbereinigung campaign geared up to consolidate parcels of land divided by successive generations of inheritance and to physically restructure vineyards. By rearranging steep and otherwise inaccessible vineyards, workers could employ machines and increase

4 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 4 sur 49 production. Flurbereinigung eliminated many of the centuries-old terraces critical to winegrowing on some of Germany s most vertical slopes. In the Rheingau, for instance, workers leveled uneven vineyards with construction waste from the Autobahn A3, which runs through Frankfurt. But, progress. Müller-Thurgau was ascendant; the vineyard was expanding again. And new wine legislation, marking the beginning of the modern age of German viticulture, was near. BACK TO TOP Origin of the 1971 German Wine Law The struggle is real! Nothing strikes fear in the hearts of non-german-speaking sommeliers quite like the uphill climb of German wine law. It is small comfort that the 1971 Deutsches Weingesetz, Germany s fifth and most current wine law, is perhaps reviled equally by new students who seek to understand it and the producers who have to adhere to it. Rare is the German wine critic who has not pronounced it misguided, yet the system established in 1971 still holds, albeit with plenty of modifications. However flawed it may be, its architects sought to address rampant problems in a rapidly modernizing industry that was emerging from the wreckage of war, with the past, lustrous glory days of Hock and Moselle a dimming memory. Germany s 1971 wine law attempted to impose new standards of quality and simplify label language, yet it was also enacted in response to external pressure. Europe s recent bloody past convinced many of the necessity of alliance and economic integration, and in 1957, the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor to the EU, was born. West Germany, France, and Italy were its principal founders. Their shared goal of economic integration soon extended to the agricultural sector, and by 1970, to wine. After World War II, rapidly compounding sets of style qualifiers, vineyard names, and village names began appearing on even the most ordinary wines, creating confusion. Where only the most famous vineyard sites once merited a mention on the label, now any piece of land, no matter how average, made an appearance. Style qualifiers, from Cabinet The Goldkapsule In the Mosel and Rheingau, regions famous for noble sweet wines, producers lost an informal means of classifying Spätlesen and Auslesen of extreme richness and

5 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 5 sur 49 to hochfeine Auslese to Natur to Nikolauswein and so on, further muddied understanding because they did not have clearly regulated meanings but just conventional applications. At the dawn of the 20th century, most German wines were likely dry in style, and only a very few merited designations implying sweetness, like Spätlese or Auslese. By the 1950s, however, new technologies such as sterile filtration allowed the production of sweet wines with ease, and terms formerly reserved for specialized wines became commonplace. If sweetness was suddenly easy to achieve, the German answer in 1971 was to modify the requirements for Spätlese and its brethren, shifting the obligation from sugar remaining to sugar occurring naturally in the grape. Before the law was put into place, other terms in regular usage, such as Natur, could imply one thing the wine should be completely natural, i.e., free of all additives, including Süssreserve and sulfur but mean another: in this case, that the wine did not undergo chaptalization. The law s authors wanted to restore simplicity and precision to German labels that had become full of cumbersome terminology that seemed, increasingly, to lack clear meaning. They redefined some classic label terms and eliminated others. In effect, anything not expressly authorized by the law was prohibited. In retrospect, the most damaging aspect of the 1971 wine law was to annihilate or aggregate many of the country s Einzellagen (individual vineyard sites). The law compacted the number of recognized single vineyards from 30,000 to around sweetness with the passage of the 1971 wine law. The law banned the use of familiar terms like feine, feinste, and hochfeine, historically added to indicate reserve wines within a larger category, so some producers turned to a bit of code. To indicate a higher level of sweetness and distinction beyond a wine s labeled Prädikat, vintners added a golden capsule. In some cases, an even longer golden capsule (lange Goldkapsule) indicates an even rarer and special selection. The capsule is also linked to the level of botrytis; for instance, a wine that reached Beerenauslese in the eyes of the law may be "declassified" to Auslese with a Goldkapsule because it showed more pure varietal character than the higher Prädikat would typically demonstrate. Apart from the color of the capsule, the only means to discern that such a wine is a separate (and more expensive) bottling is to note its unique A.P. number. In the Mosel, producers developed a second code to distinguish among different tiers of wine within a Prädikat and from the same vineyard: the star system. To indicate reserve bottlings, producers may apply one to three stars (*, **, ***),

6 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 6 sur 49 2,700. As a reaction to the seemingly limitless sometimes in conjunction with a procession of vineyards appearing on even ordinary Goldkapsule. wine labels by the 1960s, Germany desired simplification. The law set a minimum five-hectare size for single vineyards, enlarging some sites to include lesser surrounding plots while eliminating others. Additionally, the law created a new category, Grosslagen, to identify collective vineyard sites. As a catch-all category, the Grosslagen subsumed many preexisting, lesser sites, but the law provided no clarity for the consumer in labeling. Piesporter Goldtröpfchen (an acclaimed Einzellage in the village of Piesport) and Piesporter Michelsberg (a Grosslage site covering a huge band of vineyards around the town) appear to provide a choice between apples and apples to a consumer without intimate knowledge of the region. Instead of simplifying the label, the creation of Grosslagen and the aggregation of Einzellagen added confusion and eroded the distinctiveness of Germany s grandest vineyards. As (West) Germany strove to improve truth in labeling and clarity of labels, the country concurrently needed to integrate its own traditions and laws with the EEC s Common Market Organization for Wine, which was finalized in The EEC policy, modeled on the similar systems of France and Italy (its two largest wine-producing countries), created two tiers of wines: Quality Wines Produced in a Specific Region (QWPSR) and Table Wines, prohibiting any mention of place. In Germany, there was a long history of the celebration of certain sites, but no legal mandate for appellations. That changed in 1971, with the formal delimitation of 11 Anbaugebiete, Germany s winegrowing regions. Legally, the Anbaugebiete were equivalent to French AOCs or Italian DOCs, and wines labeled with an Anbaugebiet meaning they were produced from grapes grown in a single winegrowing region could comply with the new European standards for QWPSR. So with the 1971 wine law, Germany adopted the EEC model, creating the two categories of Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet (literally, quality wine from a growing region ) and Tafelwein ( table wine ). However, given Germany s special circumstances, the 1971 law added a third tier, Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP), as a subset within Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet (QbA). This category, indicating quality wines with a special attribute, allowed Germany to retain some of its traditional terms Spätlese, Auslese, and so on within the framework of the new European system. The special attributes, as defined in the 1971 law, were minimum levels of must weight. As ripeness at harvest became the apparent mark of

7 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 7 sur 49 quality for these categories of wine, chaptalization was banned for Qualitätswein mit Prädikat, but the law continued to permit its use in the broader category of Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet. Unfortunately, the widespread adoption of early ripening grape crossings like Müller-Thurgau in the 1950s and 1960s allowed producers to reach Prädikat levels of ripeness with newfound ease; the law intended to protect terms like Kabinett by attaching a definition of minimum ripeness but instead stripped them of any rarity or reserve. And, as sweetness no longer mattered in the eyes of the law, the 1971 law permitted the addition of Süssreserve ( sweet reserve, or sterilized fresh grape must) for wines of any category, at up to 15% of the total volume of the wine. While a small adjustment with Süssreserve after fermentation can allow a producer to fine-tune final sugar levels, this adjustment further purged the Prädikate of the original meaning residual sugar. Regulation of producers to ensure compliance has remained the same since the passage of the 1971 law. To qualify as Qualitätswein or Prädikatswein, wines must pass a chemical and sensory analysis. Upon successful result, the wine is awarded a unique Amtliche Prüfungsnummer (the official exam number, or A.P. number), a new certification that debuted with the 1971 wine law. Each A.P. number consists of five sets of digits. The digits, in order, indicate the following: (1) the location of the examination board, (2) the village in which the wine was produced, (3) the producer, (4) the unique number of the bottling, and (5) the year in which the wine was tested, typically one calendar year after the vintage. All Qualitätswein and Prädikatswein must carry an A.P. number, theoretically ensuring that quality remains strict. However, in the modern German wine industry, 96% of the entire volume of production falls into these categories so does an A.P. number really ensure quality wine? BACK TO TOP The 1971 German Wine Law Today The 1971 wine law is still on the books, with several modifications. A 1982 update introduced the category of Landwein and designated Eiswein as an independent Prädikat level. Some famous Classic and Selection: By the Numbers Classic wines are considered

8 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 8 sur 49 vineyards, such as Forster Kirchenstück in the Pfalz, harmoniously dry, with a Bernkasteler Doctor in the Middle Mosel, and maximum residual sugar content Kiedricher Turmberg in the Rheingau, escaped the of 15 g/l, and Selection wines are superior dry with a maximum minimum five-hectare mandate for single residual sugar content of 9 g/l (12 vineyards. Minimum Öchsle levels for Prädikat g/l allowed for Riesling). Wines categories have been raised over time. New legally labeled Classic are single varietal sanctioned terms debuted in 2000, including wines and omit any mention of a Classic and Selection, which were intended to vineyard on the label. They show replace trocken and halbtrocken, respectively. a superior minimum alcohol (Neither really caught on.) Erstes Gewächs got content of 12% (11.5% in the formal approval for use on the labels of dry wines Mosel). Selection wines are single from specific sites in the Rheingau. And while the vineyard wines from a single law technically prohibits any label language not variety. Yields are restricted to 60 hl/ha. Must weight for Selection expressly defined, at least one informal wines must be equivalent to term feinherb, indicating a slightly off-dry Auslese, and vineyards are handharvested. The wines may not be style persisted and replaced halbtrocken on most labels. released prior to September 1 of the year following harvest. Under the EU-wide CMO reforms on wine passed in the late 2000s, Germany s 13 Anbaugebiete (after the country's reunification, 2 were added to the original 11) formally became PDOs. In German, a protected designation of origin is known, cumbersomely, as a geschützte Ursprungsbezeichnung (gu). QbA and QmP became traditional terms under the eyes of the law, and Germany took the opportunity to (mercifully) shorten the category names to Qualitätswein and Prädikatswein. Tafelwein evolved into Wein. Therefore, the four German categories of wine today are the following: 1. Wein: Formerly Tafelwein, this category carries no geographic designation, although wines may be labeled as Deutscher Wein if produced from German grapes. Variety and vintage are permitted on the label. Prädikatswein Minimum Must Weight Ranges All weights in degrees Öchsle Kabinett: Spätlese: 80-95

9 GuildSomm Germany Expanded Guide - Expanded Guides - Expanded Guides - GuildS... Page 9 sur Landwein: An IGP category including trocken Auslese: and halbtrocken wines produced from any of Beerenauslese: winegrowing regions, known as Eiswein: Landweingebiete. Trockenbeerenauslese: Qualitätswein: A PDO category, encompassing most of the country s top dry wines. This Note: The above values are not category, inclusive of Prädikatswein, covers absolute ranges minimum must requirements vary by region and 96% of German wine production and almost variety. For instance, Riesling all exports. In light of the low alcohol levels requires a minimum 80 in the classically achieved by some of Germany s Mosel for Spätlese, but it must finest sweet wines, this category requires achieve 90 for that category in wines to acquire a minimum 7% alcohol the Pfalz. There is no maximum content, rather than the minimum 8.5% level for each Prädikat, meaning mandated by European law. that declassification is possible, 4. Prädikatswein: A PDO category and a subset of and common in hotter years. Qualitätswein, encompassing all of the country s best sweet wines. The lower Prädikate require a minimum 7% acquired alcohol; from Beerenauslese on up, the minimum is reduced to 5.5%. The law survives, but in order to fully understand the modern German label, one must look beyond it to the work of the VDP, an organization representing many of Germany s best producers that has worked to return emphasis to the vineyard. BACK TO TOP The VDP The Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter, or VDP, is an association of 199 German producers dedicated to high quality, the preservation of a sense of place, and those grape varieties traditionally cultivated within each winegrowing region. The VDP is a national entity comprising 10 regional associations; today, the organization counts members from all 13

10 Page 10 sur 49 German Anbaugebiete among its ranks. Membership requires a commitment to the VDP s classification system as well the observance of higher minimum must weights and lower maximum yields than permitted by German law. All wines must be estate grown. Handharvesting is required for all single vineyard wines and for any Prädikat wines of Auslese level or above. In their vineyards, members must cultivate a minimum 80% of traditional grape varieties, from selections drawn by each regional association lists that generally exclude crossings developed for hardiness in the vineyard and high, reliable yields. Additionally, in an effort to restore individualism and impact to the vineyard names of Germany, the VDP prohibits its members from using the loathed Grosslagen of 1971 on their labels. (Out with Grosslagen; long live Grosse Lage.) Member estates are identified by the mandatory presence off the VDP s logo, the Traubenadler, on bottle capsules. The VDP was founded in 1910 as the VDNV, or Verband Deutscher Naturweinversteigerer, an assembly of four regional winegrowers associations that promoted the sale of Natur (unchaptalized) wines at auction. The organization survived the turmoil of two world wars but faced ruin in 1971, when the newly enacted wine law banned the use of the term Natur. (Echoing concerns of the modern natural wine movement, the German Wine Institute would no longer allow the term s traditional use, indicating wines without chaptalization, as the wines could contain other additives, like sulfur and Süssreserve.) Facing dissolution, the core members rebranded their association as the VDP and refocused on the promotion of more stringent requirements for wine quality than the new law demanded. In 1984, the VDP started work on its own vineyard classification, using old tax registries and Napoleonic maps to rediscover parcels gerrymandered out of existence with the new law and Flurbereinigung. A focus on terroir expression as an indivisible part of superior wine quality took hold in the 1990s. In 2002, the project culminated with the launch of a formal, yet extralegal, three-tier

11 Page 11 sur 49 vineyard classification system. In 2012, the VDP refined the existing system, establishing the final framework that remains in place today. From the 2011 vintage forward, VDP members may produce wines in four different categories of origin. Emulating Burgundy, the VDP system includes a regional tier (Gutswein), a village tier (Ortswein), premier cru vineyards (Erste Lage), and grand cru vineyards (Grosse Lage). Typically, the only statement of origin provided for Gutswein is the name of the Anbaugebiet, often accompanied by a fantasy name. Ortswein is the product of multiple vineyards in a single village and is typically labeled with the village name and/or a statement of soil, such as Kalkstein (limestone), Blauen Schiefer (blue slate), or Buntsandstein (red sandstone). Erste Lage and Grosse Lage wines are single-vineyard selections, and producers are strictly limited in their choice of varieties for both categories. The Erste Lage category is often labeled in traditional fashion, with the vineyard preceded by the village name e.g., Iphöfer Kronsberg while the Grosse Lage sites are labeled solely with the vineyard name, in true grand cru fashion: Goldtröpfchen, Rothenberg, Hermannshöhle. Many Grosse Lage and Erste Lage sites may share names with official Einzellagen, yet they are often defined more narrowly in size. Others resurrect the old names of pre-1971 sites engulfed by adjacent vineyards. The name of the category for each individual wine may appear on the capsule alongside the VDP logo, but producers often omit this mention for the Gutswein and Ortswein tiers. Producers may release wines of any sweetness level at any tier of the new hierarchy. However, in an effort to restore the historical meanings connoted by Prädikate, VDP producers must limit their use to sweet wines. Therefore, Spätlese trocken, Auslese trocken, and the like no longer appear on dry wine labels of VDP producers. Absent the mention of a Prädikat, the term trocken continues to signify dry wines at the Erste Lage level or below. For the Grosse Lage category, however, it is replaced by the grander term Grosses Gewächs, or Great Growth. A Grosses Gewächs wine is therefore a dry wine from a Grosse Lage vineyard, harvested at a minimum level of ripeness equivalent to Spätlese, identified by the appearance of the trademarked acronym GG on the label. Grosses Gewächs white wines may not be released until September 1 of the year after harvest. For red wines, the category requires an additional year of aging and at least 12 months in wood. Prädikatswein Grosse Lage wines may be released as early as May 1 of the year after harvest. Remember that all VDP dry wines, including the very expensive Grosses Gewächs bottlings, are simply Qualitätswein in the eyes of the law.

12 Page 12 sur 49 Chaptalization is therefore legally possible and routinely practiced with Spätburgunder despite the VDP s original mission of promoting Natur wines. The maximum yield for each category is as follows: Gutswein: 75 hl/ha Ortswein: 75 hl/ha Erste Lage: 60 hl/ha Grosse Lage: 50 hl/ha While the VDP generally requires its membership to adhere to the current system, there are countless exceptions and exemptions to the rules. Remember that the national organization is composed of 10 regional bodies, each with their own traditions. As of 2016, the Erste Lage category still does not exist in three Anbaugebiete Mosel, Ahr, and Rheinhessen. Some estates, with long histories of marketing alternative terms, still use their own label language in place of Grosse Lage and Erste Lage; for example, Bürklin-Wolf continues to label its top singlevineyard wines as GC and PC. Schloss Johannisberg continues to label their Silberlack Grosses Lage Riesling as Trocken, even as Koehler-Ruprecht was forbidden from retaining its traditional Prädikat declarations on dry wines a move that led the producer to leave the association in The rules are not for everyone in the Mosel, for instance, producers make Grosse Lage Kabinett at yields of 60 to 70 hectoliters per hectare, a violation tolerated by the VDP because the higher yields are more suitable for that style of wine. Because the VDP s classification system is not a legal construction, it does not always behave predictably. Trying to understand the system by flagging its inconsistencies is to slide headlong into confusion and despair. BACK TO TOP The Grapes of Germany Today, Germany maintains 102,000 hectares of vines. In 2014, it was the world s 14th largest grower, behind Greece and South Africa.

13 Page 13 sur 49 Germany emphasizes varietal expressions over blended wines, and the variety is often a more prominent feature on the label than region. The country adheres to the EU minimum of 85% for varietal labeling. All statistics courtesy of the German Wine Institute. Riesling (23,440 ha, 2014): In the late 1990s, Riesling, Germany s most distinguished grape variety, surpassed Müller-Thurgau to become the country s most planted grape. Riesling is the most planted variety in 7 of Germany s 13 Anbaugebiete, and the country maintains nearly half of the world s 50,000 hectares of the vine. Whether the grape originated in Alsace or Germany is unknown; monks cultivated Riesslaner in the Rheingau vineyards of Kloster Eberbach by 1435, and in a 1552 Latin book of herbs, Hieronymus Bock logged Riesling in the modern-day regions of the Mosel, Rheingau, and Rheinhessen. Forces both noble and clerical mandated its cultivation throughout Germany s emergent fine-wine regions from the late 17th century on. Riesling became synonymous with the Rheingau, a region that was dominated by red wine in the Middle Ages. Indeed, the Benedictine monks of Johannisberg insistent on its propagation were immortalized in the nickname Johannisberger, used throughout the 20th-century New World to refer to the grape. Naturally floral and aromatic, high in acidity, and capable of making age-worthy dry and sweet wines, Riesling is a sommelier secret weapon and Germany s best and most transparent indicator of terroir. Winemaking is not one-size-fits-all, beginning even before harvest. The decision to make a dry or sweet wine impacts yield: lower yields and the increased concentration they afford are necessary for great dry wines, but the sweeter styles often benefit from higher yields as they gain concentration from residual sugar. Some wines undergo cold, pre-fermentation skin contact to extract phenolic content and naturally raise ph; others are whole-bunch pressed for cleaner, purer must. German Riesling producers are divided on the subject of spontaneous (ambient) versus inoculated fermentations; a spontaneous ferment is more unpredictable and requires more oxygen, producing a wilder array of earthy, sulfide-driven flavors, while inoculated ferments are simpler to maintain and can deliver fruit forwardness and cleaner flavors. Fermentation and aging may occur in stainless steel or large oak containers. (Classic German vessels include the Stück, a 1,200-liter oval cask, and its variants, the Doppelstück and Halbstück, 2,400 liters and 600 liters respectively.) Malolactic fermentation is usually stopped, by naturally low ph or by design,

14 Page 14 sur 49 although some producers resort to the process in spectacularly acidic, lean years. Perhaps counterintuitively, top dry wines can be leesy and rich, with weight that recalls Chardonnay, while great sweet wines can seem light and delicate, despite intense residual sugar. Germany excels at both ends of the sugar spectrum with Riesling, and despite lingering stereotypes, quantities of the trocken bottlings outpaced sweeter styles by the mid-2000s. Even so, legally dry Riesling in Germany often has a pinch of residual sugar to balance the naturally high acidity the grape achieves in these northerly growing regions. Müller-Thurgau (12,761 ha, 2014): Müller-Thurgau, a Riesling and Madeleine Royale crossing first obtained by the Swiss Dr. Hermann Müller at the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute in 1882, became an incredibly important variety in Germany after World War II. Early ripening and high yielding, the variety became such an important component of mass-made Liebfraumilch wines and other low-end products that it quickly emerged as Germany s leading grape variety in 1969, a position it maintained until Riesling usurped it 30 years later. German consumers during the period loved off-dry Müller-Thurgau for its muscat-like taste, but the variety is less acidic and less aromatic than Riesling and is not considered a quality grape in Germany today. It remains the second most planted variety in the country, but acreage continues to diminish; acreage in 2014 was about half of what it was in Spätburgunder/Pinot Noir (11,789 ha, 2014): Germany is the world s third-largest producer of Pinot Noir, trailing only France and the United States. Baden, where Pinot Noir first appeared in the late 800s, leads the way with nearly half of the country s supply, followed by the Pfalz and the Rheinhessen. From 1964, when Pinot Noir claimed less than 2,000 hectares, the grape s popularity has soared. It is a beneficiary of climate change and maturing German tastes for fine red wine, and the grape s ascendance is in line with the overall advancement of red grapes in Germany. Frühburgunder, a natural mutation genetically identical to Pinot Noir, is a rare specialty of Germany. As of 2014, there were 257 hectares in the country. Thicker skinned than Pinot Noir, the grape also ripens about two weeks earlier in the season. Resultant wines are darker in color and fruit expression, with lower acidity. In France, the grape is known as Pinot Noir Précoce or, historically, Pinot Madeleine.

15 Page 15 sur 49 Dornfelder (8,105 ha, 2014): Germany s second most planted red grape variety, Dornfelder, is a cross of Helfensteiner and Heroldrebe developed by August Herold in 1956 and named after a founder of the Weinsberg viticulture school, August Dornfeld. The thick-skinned grape produces a darker, fuller style of wine than Spätburgunder but is highly vigorous in the vineyard. Its current popularity in Germany's domestic market stems from the common belief among consumers that color equals quality in reds. Grauburgunder/Pinot Gris (5,627 ha, 2014): Grauburgunder has been cultivated in Germany since the Middle Ages and shows the most potential in the southern region of Baden, across the Rhine River from Alsace. Germany is actually the world s second-largest grower of Pinot Gris, trailing Italy in total acreage. Here the wines are typically dry, with more power and richness than Italian Pinot Grigio but less outright funk than in Alsace. Occasionally, sweet botrytized wines are produced, labeled as Ruländer. Silvaner (5,031 ha, 2014): Once the most planted variety in Germany, Silvaner lost its top billing to Müller-Thurgau in 1969 and has been sliding ever since. Today, it makes up only about 5% of the total German vineyard, yet in 2015, Silvaner finally gained a little ground, halting 50 years of decline in the vineyard. A Traminer and Österreichisch-Weiss ( Austrian white ) crossing, Silvaner is Austrian in origin and first arrived in Franken, its natural home in Germany, during the mid-17th century. In comparison to Riesling, it is lower in acid, less aromatic, less fruit driven, and prone to higher levels of alcohol. (If anything, Grüner Veltliner may be a better comparison for style.) Silvaner ripens earlier than Riesling, which led many 18thand 19th-century growers to interplant it as a form of insurance, a tradition mirrored by grape breeders, who used Silvaner as a parent stock for crossings like Bacchus, Morio-Muskat, and Rieslaner. There are four broad types of the variety: Grüner, Blauer, Roter, and Gelber green, blue, red, and yellow. By the 20th century, grape breeders isolated the most popular clones of the grape from the Grüner Silvaner sub-variety, which developed a thicker skin, generating greater resistance to rot and mildew but also a higher degree of bitterness and green character in the wines. Today, the newest clones developed at the Würzburg grape-breeding institute in Franken are typically of the Grüner or Gelber Silvaner sub-varieties, exhibiting looser clusters, smaller berries, less susceptibility to botrytis, and heightened aromatics and acid structure. Weissburgunder/Pinot Blanc (4,794 ha, 2014): Germany is the world s leading grower of Pinot Blanc, and the grape appears throughout Germany s Anbaugebiete. Strongholds are

16 Page 16 sur 49 Baden and the Pfalz. Weissburgunder in Germany can be simple, innocuous, and aromatically neutral, but at the top end, it has emerged as Germany s leading textural white grape. Acidity typically rates higher than in Grauburgunder but lower than in Riesling. Great Weissburgunder is subject to many of the same treatments in the winery as good white Burgundy. Lemberger/Blaufränkisch (1,820 ha, 2014): German renditions of the Austrian Blaufränkisch variety are beginning to show modest success, and many consider Lemberger to be the second highest quality red grape in Germany. It is cultivated primarily in Württemberg. Scheurebe (1,423 ha, 2014): Named for the grape breeder Georg Scheu, who obtained this cross of Riesling and Bukettrebe at Alzey in 1916, Scheurebe is held as one of the few German crossings that can achieve high quality in the glass. Like Riesling, it can over-deliver in both dry and sweet versions, and it offers some of the pungently aromatic, thiol-based aromas of Sauvignon Blanc: grapefruit, cassis, cat pee. It is most successful in the Rheinhessen and the Pfalz. Like Müller-Thurgau, Scheurebe was originally recorded as a cross of Riesling and Silvaner, an error corrected one century after its birth. Other Varieties: It is international white varieties that are advancing most suddenly in the German vineyard. Chardonnay, ubiquitous elsewhere, was unknown in Germany prior to the 1990s, yet there are nearly 1,700 hectares today, much of it vinified as Sekt. Since 1995, Sauvignon Blanc made its debut and amassed over 800 hectares. White German grape crossings are all on the decline in the vineyard. Kerner maintains almost 3,000 hectares under vine, although 4,500 hectares have been ripped out since Bacchus, Ortega, and others are similarly on the decline. Important German red grapes beyond those detailed above include Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier) and Trollinger (Schiava). Both exceed 2,000 hectares in acreage and grow almost exclusively in Württemberg. Regent, an early-ripening red hybrid first authorized for planting in 1996, has actually spread to cover almost 2,000 hectares, but this is not a grape for quality German red wines of the future. German Sekt

17 Page 17 sur 49 Germans are the biggest sparkling wine consumers per capita, and Germany is the third-largest producer of sparkling wines in the world. The country's history of sparkling wine production is long. The first German to make sparkling wine was Florenz-Ludwig Heidsieck, in 1785 in Champagne. The first sparkling wine made in Germany was in Württemberg, in Sparkling wine quickly became so popular that Kaiser Wilhelm set a Sekt tax in 1902 in order to finance his navy. It remains today: 1.02 Euro per bottle. Around 85% of the output comes from the seven largest companies, including Henkell, Rotkäppchen, and Söhnlein-Brillant. These are companies that buy base wines from all over Europe and make fizz with the tank method. Ever wonder where all the Airen goes? Well, here is the answer! But that's another story. Since growers now know how to make great Riesling and Pinot Noir, they are keen to improve sparkling wine quality. The leader of this movement is Volker Raumland from Rheinhessen, who founded Germany's first winery focusing only on sparkling wines. He started with a service business, to make Sekt for other wineries, since many lack the special bottling machines and other equipment required. However, he makes outstanding sparkling wines himself and makes base wine solely for this purpose not too ripe, hand-harvested, using the free-run juice. Ten years ago, when growers had mediocre wine in the cellar, they said, Oh, let s make Sekt out of it, put a lot of dosage on top, and sell it. Those days are almost over! Raumland and many other growers are making very good base wines. Some of these are fermented and aged in oak. A few growers are even making singlevineyard Sekt. Half of the premium Sekt is made from Riesling. For basic Riesling Sekt, long lees ageing is not required, since the lees aromas would overwhelm the aromatic Riesling character. Raumland and other producers like Matthieu Kaufmann (former cellar master at Bollinger) of Reichsrat von Buhl make profound Riesling Sekt. They do some malolactic fermentation and leave the Sekt longer on the lees, resulting in more autolytic character but with the Riesling fruit still shining through. Theirs is a unique and special sparkling wine style. One-third of premium Sekt is made of Pinot varieties, with Pinot Blanc playing an important role. The remaining one-fifth of premium Sekt is made with aromatic

18 Page 18 sur 49 varieties. Scheurebe and Gewürztraminer are specialties. Most Sekt is Brut, with a handful of producers making very balanced Brut Nature styles. Romana Echensperger, MW BACK TO TOP Rheingau The Rheingau is the classic site of Rhenish Riesling cultivation -H.W. Dahlen, General Secretary of the German Wine-Growers Association, 1894 The Rhine River, one of Western Europe s key routes for transport and trade, flows northward from its headwaters in Switzerland to the North Sea without deviation, save for one short turn to the west. Between the cities of Mainz and Wiesbaden, the Rhine s wide path collides with the rise of the western Taunus range, and it swerves westward past the town of Rüdesheim am Rhein before turning north again. On this 30-kilometer stretch of river, the central Rheingau rises from the river s north bank a massive south-facing slope that climbs, unhurriedly, from 75 meters at the water s edge to over 300 meters in elevation. Here, where some believe the Riesling vine first sprung from a seed, Germany s international reputation for world-class wines was forged. The central Rheingau includes most of the region s vineyards and its most renowned winegrowing villages. Between the outskirts of Wiesbaden on its eastern edge and the village of Rüdesheim in the west are Walluf, Martinsthal, Rauenthal, Eltville, Kiedrich, Erbach, Hallgarten, Hattenheim, Oestrich, Winkel, and Johannisberg. Geisenheim, home to Germany s top enological school and grape-breeding institute, sits at the river s edge, downslope and just west of Johannisberg. (Johannisberg itself is technically part of the larger Geisenheim municipality.) From Walluf to the town of Geisenheim, the Rhine River is broad, the hillside sprawling and less abrupt. Soils feature a mixture of slate, quartzite, and sandstone, with layers of loess and clay on the lower slopes and

19 Page 19 sur 49 stonier, more eroded soils on the upper slopes, with a higher proportion of slate. West of Geisenheim, the river narrows before bending northward, and the Rheingau hillside becomes more dramatic. Many of the central Rheingau s vineyards exhibit a leisurely incline, but at its edge, Rüdesheim claims the region s steepest slopes, which reach a 70% grade in the Grosse Lage site Berg Schlossberg. There are two other, smaller areas within the Rheingau Anbaugebiet. The second sector is the Western Rheingau, which extends from the red-wine commune of Assmannshausen northward to Lorchhausen on the right bank of the river, at the entrance to the Rhine Gorge and the Mittelrhein Anbaugebiet. Conditions are more in line with the Mittelrhein than the central Rheingau; colder sites and purer slate soils are common. The third area, the Maingau, is not actually on the Rhine at all. Instead, this small enclave of vines is clustered The classic English nickname for Rhine wines, Hock, is derived from the name of Hochheim. around the village of Hochheim am Main, east of Wiesbaden in the valley of the Main River, a small Rhine tributary. It is uncharacteristically warm, and soils here demonstrate a geological transition from the Rhenish Massif into the Mainz Basin, with loess-covered loams and marls replacing sandstone and slate. Slopes are gentler than on the Rhine itself and overall lower in elevation, rarely exceeding 120 meters above sea level. Despite what could have been a sensible division into two or three Bereiche, the 1971 wine law identifies only one: Johannisberg, named for the small village at the heart of the central Rheingau. On the Rheingau hill, proud castles (Schloss) and former abbeys (Kloster) populate the landscape, signaling the historical importance of the church and aristocracy, the chief architects of viticulture in the Rheingau. As in the Mosel, advancing Roman legions introduced the vine here, but it was in the monastic era that winegrowing came to dominate this small region to a degree unmatched anywhere else in Germany. Benedictine monks founded a Kloster at Johannisberg in the early 12th century, and the Cistercians arrived from Burgundy to establish Kloster Eberbach in Like their contemporaries in the Côte d Or, the Cistercians of Kloster Eberbach developed a massive network of vineyards, and by 1435, the monks records indicate the cultivation of Riesling. Kloster Eberbach began marking high-quality

20 Page 20 sur 49 wines as Cabinet in 1712, and in 1775, Schloss Johannisberg announced the first planned Spätlese harvest of botrytis-affected fruit. Meanwhile, aristocrats secured massive Rheingau vineyard holdings as well. Schloss Schönborn, founded in 1349, Schloss Vollrads, Baron Langwerth von Simmern, Schloss Reinhartshausen, and other winegrowing estates that count centuries of noble lineage still populate the region. Schloss Schönborn and Schloss Johannisberg were among the first producers in Germany to introduce glass bottles, in the early 1700s. The influence of both church and aristocracy would erode in the modern era. The Catholic Church lost many of its lands in Germany at the beginning of the 19th century, in a wave of secularization instigated by Napoleon. Schloss Johannisberg is now under corporate ownership, while the Eberbach Abbey and its famous walled Steinberg domaine are now the property of the Hessen State Winery, the largest single wine producer in Germany. And the stodgy approach of some of the elder aristocratic houses, steadfast in the belief that noble blood produces noble wines, started to prove otherwise. The height of German wine fame in the 19th century rested on the shoulders of Rheingau Riesling, but by the late 20th century, many of the region s wines seemed less inspired. Today, the Rheingau is finally experiencing renewed vigor, amidst changes in philosophy and management at the old guard, propelled by the energy and imagination of newer producers who number their experience in years, not centuries. The best of the Rheingau today includes Peter Jakob Kühn, Josef Leitz, Eva Fricke, Georg Breuer, and Künstler all newcomers or names unknown in the mid-20th century. No region in Germany is as committed to Riesling as the Rheingau. It accounts for almost 2,500 of the region s 3,160 total hectares under vine 8 out of every 10 vines in the Rheingau are Riesling. Almost exclusively, Riesling is grown in the best vineyard sites; many of Germany s most legendary examples of the wine were produced here. As the first Spätlese and, subsequently, Auslese wines were fashioned from Rheingau grapes by the end of the 1700s, the region has a long history of success with noble sweet wines. Botrytis is a common occurrence near the broad Rhine, especially in vineyards nearest the river. (It's also common in the vineyards closest to the riverside villages, where buildings constrict the flow of wind and encourage rot.) Even as the 50th parallel runs directly through the Rheingau, the moderating impact of the Rhine on local temperatures allows Riesling to hang on the vine into the early autumn for the late harvests necessary for Prädikatswein. In most vintages, the Rheingau adds 40% or more of its production to the Prädikatswein category, even as some of it finishes dry.

21 Page 21 sur 49 The modern focus is dry Riesling: around 80% of Rheingau Riesling has nine grams per liter or less of residual sugar. A turn toward dry Riesling in the Rheingau, which would replace off-dry wines as the primary product of the region by the end of the 20th century, began with the founding of the Charta Association in The association strove to promote more stringent quality guidelines than the 1971 wine law provides, to better define the Rheingau s great vineyard sites, and to elevate dry Riesling to its historical role as a top product of the region prior to the Second World War. (Its aims echo and inform those of the VDP.) Charta Riesling became a brand for its members. Wines in the dry style carried the association s logo, an emblem of three Roman arches styled from the balcony of the historic Graue Haus hotel in Winkel. Bernhard Breuer of Rüdesheim s Georg Breuer estate led the charge, and the conversation started by Charta would eventually extend beyond the Rheingau and ignite debate throughout Germany. Locally, producers in the Rheingau pushed for a legal classification of vineyard sites and a new legal designation for top dry wines of the Rheingau: Erstes Gewächs. This first growth category, permitted under German wine law for the 1999 vintage forward, applies to dry Riesling and Spätburgunder bottlings from selected Rheingau vineyards. The vineyard classification, based on an 1867 Rheingau map, represented the first site-based quality hierarchy accepted into law in the wake of the 1971 legislation. Unlike the Charta designation, or the coming Grosses Gewächs of the VDP, the Erstes Gewächs category is available to all producers who adhere to its requirements and have a share in the selected land which amounts to almost one-third of the entire planted area of the Rheingau resulting in a watered-down sense of first growth by anyone s standards. Erstes Gewächs, now accompanied by the logo of three arches, is legally sanctioned and therefore spelled out in full on Rheingau labels. Rheingau vineyards, whether classified by German law or considered Grosse Lage by the VDP, number as some of the most famous Riesling sites in Germany. Two monopoles of ecclesiastical origin exist: Schloss Johannisberg, planted to Riesling since 1720, and the Hattenheimer Steinberg vineyard of Kloster Eberbach, enclosed by a wall in There is also Hattenheimer Pfaffenberg, a monopole of Schloss Schönborn since the 1600s. Other great

22 Page 22 sur 49 sites are of fragmented ownership, such as Kiedricher Gräfenberg, exemplified by Robert Weil; Hochheimer Hölle and Johannisberger Hölle, a shared name that indicates a rocky hill (not hell, the direct translation of hölle); and the trio of great vineyards at Rüdesheim, named Berg Rottland, Berg Roseneck, and Berg Schlossberg. At the small outpost for Spätburgunder at Assmannshausen, there is one great site, Höllenberg. August Kesseler is the preeminent producer. Mosel The valleys of the Mosel River and its tributaries, the Saar and Ruwer, together comprise one of Germany s most picturesque, historic, and iconic wine regions. Cherished for the attributes of lightness and finesse it can imbue in its wines, the Mosel was for many years Europe s largest cultivator of Riesling, until finally overtaken by the Pfalz in the mid-2000s. Talk of the Mosel conjures imagery of a winding river snaking its way across a landscape of small villages and precipitous slopes, covered in tiles of broken slate and draped with vines. Coursing between the Hunsrück hills and the Eifel Mountains, the Mosel River creates an idyllic backdrop for winegrowing, even as its best vineyards inhabit some of the most challenging terrain in the world for winegrowers. The earliest evidence of winegrowing in Germany is in the Mosel. Imported by the Romans, who founded the city of Trier in 16 BCE as a provincial capital, Traditionally, Riesling from the Rheingau was bottled in brown glass, while Riesling from the Mosel was bottled in green glass. viticulture here first prospered at the end of the 3rd century CE, after Probus lifted the imperial prohibition on winegrowing in Rome s provinces. Early medieval documents detailing vineyard ownership exist from the 7th century, and the church guided its development. The St. Maximin monastery and the Bishop of Trier both owned scores of vines by the late medieval period, and it was a powerful Archbishop of Trier, Clemens Wenceslaus, who in 1786 decreed a mandatory

23 Page 23 sur 49 shift to Riesling throughout the vineyard. In early modern times, the Mosel and the Rheingau became models for Riesling they were the only two areas in Germany producing noble sweet wines with any regularity. Unlike the Rheingau, however, the Mosel began a tradition of producing lightly sweet, low-alcohol Riesling wines in the 19th century. Before the advent of sterile filtration, this could only be accomplished with a heavy dose of sulfur, and with it, the Mosel style of Kabinett Riesling was born, offering a clear alternative to the heavier dry styles of the Rheingau and elsewhere. The Mosel today produces thrilling, electric dry Riesling alongside wines with every degree of residual sugar, yet it is the light and delicate Kabinett Riesling that is its signature gift. (And, with ripeness more easily obtained in the modern era of climate change, one that is increasingly difficult to craft with a classic sense of balance.) The Mosel River, at 545 kilometers in length, is the longest tributary of the Rhine River. It begins in the Vosges Mountains in France, home of the Moselle AOP, and forms Luxembourg s border with Germany. It then carves a winding path for more than 200 kilometers through Germany to the city of Koblenz, where it converges with the Rhine. Vineyards follow its every twist and turn. The modern Anbaugebiet, known simply as the Mosel, includes six Bereiche, three of which lie on the river itself: Bernkastel (the Middle Mosel), followed by Burg Cochem (the Lower Mosel, or Terrassenmosel) and Obermosel (the Upper Mosel). Two Bereiche, the Ruwertal and Saar, mark the vineyards of its two main tributaries, and a sixth, Moseltor, covers a scant handful of vines in the Saarland, near Obermosel. The 50-kilometer-long Bernkastel Bereich, named for the township of Bernkastel-Kues at its heart, holds two-thirds of the Mosel s vineyard area; its wine-producing villages are responsible for a significant share of the Mosel s historical fame and current reputation. The Mosel Single-Po The Mosel s treacherously steep slopes often register grades of 50 to 80% and may even reach 100% or higher, spelling worry for life and limb despite advantages for the vine. Mosel growers traditionally employed their own system of vine training, the singlepost system, to improve workers ability to traverse the dangerous hillsides. In the single-post system, growers train vines upright, without wires, employing either a vertical cordon or two canes, wrapped in a characteristic heart-shaped bow. Absent wires, vineyard workers have much more freedom of movement to navigate the difficult terrain. (Pulleys and cables are still required in some places to move machinery.) However, the system

24 Page 24 sur 49 Collectively, the Mosel s six districts constitute one faces criticism. In order to of Germany s coolest climates for winegrowing, as improve airflow and reduce the region crosses the 50th parallel. The moderating effect of the river and the orientation and aspect of its botrytis, leaf removal is necessary, but this increases sun exposure, which can lead to TDN-based vineyard sites, altitude, and exposure to wind all flavors (petrol) in Riesling. Wire impact growing season temperatures and the ability trellises appeared in the 20th to produce quality wine. At this latitude, global century at larger properties, and warming notwithstanding, average annual in the post-flurbereinigung world, temperatures hover right around 10 C (50 F), and the single-post system, once the typical growing season is compressed to about 100 days. However, the tweaks and amplifications of commonplace, has lost a lot of ground in the Mosel. climate that the Mosel offers can extend that period by 40 to 50 days in the best sites. The warmest vineyards in the entire valley are south- and southwest-facing slopes along the Mosel River itself, where sunlight and temperature are magnified, and such slopes produce the best wines. Rarely are north-facing slopes planted, even though viticulture expanded in the latter half of the 20th century to include flatter plains and side valleys, none of which offer enough warmth to produce highquality Riesling. Vineyards in narrower sectors of the Mosel Valley and those at lower elevation are afforded more protection from wind, while forests cap the hillsides, acting as bulwarks against the cold air drafts that blow in from the Hunsrück and Eifel ranges. Proximity to the river helps to mitigate the danger of spring frosts, even as it creates frequent banks of autumn fog, signaling the arrival of botrytis. Soil color and composition also play a role in ripening the vine. The thin, sandy topsoil of the Mosel is typically covered with tiles of broken slate, carried up the slopes and strewn about the vineyards year after year, to collect heat and prevent erosion of the soil beneath. The soil s trademark element, Devonian slate, helps to defuse nighttime lows and limit diurnal variation by releasing heat stored throughout the day into the canopy. Devonian slate is found in both dark blue and red variations; the effect is intensified with dark-colored slate, the more common variation. The

25 Page 25 sur 49 broken, weathered soil also affords excellent drainage. In the Mosel, rainfall varies from 650 to 900 millimeters annually (26.5 to 35.5 inches), and it is evenly distributed throughout the year. Without such dry, well-drained, heat-retaining soils, ripening would be delayed. Additionally, the slate soils of the Mosel have served to limit the incursion of phylloxera. The bug is present, but it cannot thrive, leaving a few pockets of centurion vines in the valley. (Nonetheless, most vines are grafted it is usually illegal to plant otherwise.) Extremely weathered and nutrient poor, these old, acidic slate soils can lead to nitrogen deficiency in grape must and low wine ph. The combination of resulting sulfur-derived aromas and high acidity easily leads tasters into mineral territory. DISTRICTS OF THE MOSEL Bernkastel: The Middle Mosel follows the winding path of the river from Trier north to Zell. One after another, the famous winegrowing villages of the region appear: Leiwen, Trittenheim, Piesport, Brauneberg, Bernkastel-Kues, Graach, Wehlen, Zeltingen, Ürzig, and Erden. This sector, spanning some 50 kilometers of river, claims three-quarters of the acreage of the entire Anbaugebiet and includes many of Germany s most renowned Riesling sites: Bernkasteler Doctor, Piesporter Goldtröpfchen, Erdener Prälat, Graacher Himmelreich, Ürziger Würzgarten, and the famous sundial (Sonnenuhr) vineyards of Wehlen and Zeltingen. The classic identity of the Mosel was etched here, but quality can vary immensely. Common Grosslagen bottlings like Piesporter Michelsberg or lesser single vineyard wines have diminished the region s reputation and the price of its best wines. One can even see this in the local architecture. Houses from a century ago, with their slate-tiled roofs, reflect past wealth, while modern construction evokes more modest means. Nonetheless, some of the Mosel s greatest and most timeless wines emerge from this region, from benchmark producers like Joh. Jos. Prüm, Reinhold Haart, Reichsgraf von

26 Page 26 sur 49 Kesselstatt, and Dr. Loosen; meanwhile, upstarts with more recent reputations, like Ansgar Clüsserath, Daniel Vollenweider, and Clemens-Busch, are revitalizing the Mosel s image. Burg Cochem: The Lower Mosel stretches from Zell northward through Cochem to Koblenz, at the border of the Mittelrhein Anbaugebiet where the Mosel River joins the Rhine. The slopes here are even more dizzyingly steep, with grades easily reaching 70% or more. The region, also known as the Terrassenmosel, still hides some old, narrow hillside terraces, originally built by Romans and painstakingly maintained through the centuries, but most of these relics were obliterated with the Flurbereinigung campaign, which leveled and widened hillsides to permit machines. Winningen is a key winegrowing village, home to star producer Heymann-Löwenstein and the premier vineyard site Uhlen. Reinhard Heymann-Löwenstein has applied for Germany s first three single-vineyard PDOs, for three separate parcels within Uhlen: Blaufüsser Lay, Roth Lay, and Laubach. The outspoken intellectual also has a theory as to the Middle Mosel s superiority over his more remote stretch of river: The smart kids from Winningen went to the city (Koblenz). We were left with the stupid kids that made bad wine. Obermosel: The Upper Mosel Anbaugebiet occupies the right bank of the Mosel River from just south of Trier to the French border. (The left bank is in Luxembourg.) This sector of the Mosel sits, with Chablis and Champagne, within the Paris Basin, atop a calcareous soil makeup that replaces the Devonian slate of the Middle and Lower Mosel. Riesling takes a backseat in Obermosel to Elbling, an ancient white grape variety that produces simple, fruity whites and refreshing sparkling wines. Ruwertal: The Ruwer is a small tributary of the Mosel River, a stream connecting to the Middle Mosel between Trier and Trittenheim. A slightly cooler region than the Middle Mosel, the Ruwertal has a similar slate soil composition and contains about 200 hectares of vines, mostly Riesling. The church s historical connection to viticulture is clear here: the Benedictine St. Maximin monastery, so important to medieval viticulture in the Mosel, based its winemaking operations here, at (Maximin) Grünhaus, as early as the 900s. The estate, still in operation and now owned by the von Schubert family, is an Ortsteil and one of the Ruwer s best wine producers. The other

27 Page 27 sur 49 great estate of the Ruwertal, Karthäuserhof in Eitelsbach, also claims an ecclesiastical origin under the domaine of Carthusian monks. Saar: A small region south of Trier, the Saar Bereich inhabits the banks of the Saar River, a Mosel tributary. The slate hills are steep and windswept here, but most vineyards do not line the river, which flows almost directly north. Despite its more southerly location, the Saar is therefore one of the coolest areas of the Mosel. Achieving ripeness can be a challenge in cool vintages and the wines again, mostly Riesling are often even more austere and acid-driven than those from the Middle Mosel. The best vineyards are the south-facing Saarburger Rausch, the neighboring Hörecker and Altenberg on the Saar River in Kanzem, and the legendary Scharzhofberg in Wiltingen. Scharzhofberg is likely the most famous site in the Mosel or in all of Germany. Egon Müller is its most lauded producer. Moseltor: Geologically connected to the Upper Mosel, with limestone rather than slate soils, Moseltor falls on the other side of a state boundary and is therefore considered a separate Bereich. There are only three winegrowing villages and a handful of vineyards. Rheinhessen Home to one-quarter of Germany s land under vine, the Rheinhessen is the country s biggest winegrowing region. The Anbaugebiet spans a large area south of the Rheingau and north of the Pfalz, with the Nahe on its western border and Hessische-Bergstrasse a few kilometers to the east. The distance from the city of Worms at its southern end to its northernmost point at Mainz, the Rheinland-Pfalz state capital, is nearly 50 kilometers. The Rhine River creates a natural border with the Rheingau as well as its eastern boundary, but for much of the region s 30-kilometer-wide area, the river s influence is not markedly felt. In such a large area, there is a great diversity of mesoclimates and soils, and no single climatic feature a river s moderating influence, or the aspect of a slope can adequately explain prevailing conditions throughout the entire Anbaugebiet. As such, there is a diversity of grape varieties and no single Rheinhessen style, save for a self-inflicted image: Rheinhessen is known as the land of Liebfraumilch, a region committed to quantity over quality wine.

28 Page 28 sur 49 There is one area historically associated with quality winegrowing in the Rheinhessen: the Roter Hang, a red hill of clay and weathered red sandstone (Rotliegendes) on the left bank of the Rhine between the villages of Nierstein and Nackenheim. It lies within a larger span of eastern exposures, the Rheinterrasse, which extends south of Nierstein through the village of Oppenheim. Protected from the frost and winds that sweep through much of the Rheinhessen and home to the famed vineyards Pettenthal and Rothenberg, the Roter Hang is a slim, east-facing slope reaching 70 to 80% grade, but it is hardly representative of the entire Anbaugebiet. Riesling from the Roter Hang fetched prices in line with those of the Rheingau in the 19th century in fact, the most expensive wine aboard the doomed Titanic was a Niersteiner Riesling but the remainder of the Rheinhessen became better known in the 20th century as a Liebfrau(en)milch "Our Lady s Milk" likely got its start as a real product of the Liebfrau monastery in Worms in the 18th century. From the 1950s to 1980s, however, it was Germany s most famous wine brand in the Englishspeaking world. The 1971 wine law allowed Nahe, Pfalz, Rheingau, and Rheinhessen to produce it, requiring it to contain at least 70% of the following varieties: Riesling, Müller-Thurgau, Silvaner, and Kerner. The wines must contain at least 18 grams per liter of residual sugar, and varietal labeling is not allowed. reservoir of uninteresting crossings and unremarkable wines. By the 1970s, most Rheinhessen grapes were directed to off-dry-to-semi-sweet generic Liebfraumilch blends. Liebfraumilch, which originated as a specialty of Worms, became a sugary, bastardized product that debased Germany s reputation as a wine producer. At the same time, the 1971 wine law appropriated the name of the small village of Nierstein for one of three Rheinhessen Bereiche, diminishing its value. (Niersteiner Gutes Domtal, a collective site introduced in 1971, came to markets in force.) The Rheinhessen name, including that of its most spectacular stretch of vineyards, was tarnished. In the last two decades of the 20th century, however, a new spirit arose. In areas never seriously considered promising, new voices arrived on the scene. Klaus-Peter Keller and Philipp Wittmann, whose estates share access to several vineyards in the southern Wonnegau Bereich, led the charge. Their best vineyards, including several Grosse Lage sites, appear as gently undulating fields rather than dramatic slopes. (In the village of Westhofen they have neighboring parcels in Kirchspiel, Morstein, and Brunnenhäuschen; in Flörsheim-Dalsheim,

29 Page 29 sur 49 Keller also maintains plots in Bürgel and Hubacker.) Bereft of the Rhine s influence, the limestone plateaus and low valleys of the Rheinhessen interior have the potential to create world-class wines, amidst a nearly treeless patchwork of agricultural pursuits. The vineyards appear unspectacular, but some of the best dry Riesling wines in the world today come from the limestone and loess soils in the Bereich of Wonnegau. (Keller sources the most expensive dry Riesling produced in Germany, G-Max, from an undisclosed parcel in the region.) Rheinhessen s third Bereich, Bingen, is named for the town at its northwestern corner and covers much of the western reaches of the Anbaugebiet. The region lacks the star power Wonnegau currently enjoys, but there are clusters of good sites in the villages of Bingen and Siefersheim, the latter anchored by the recent successes of Wagner-Stempel. Keller, Wittmann, Wagner-Stempel, the biodynamic Kühling-Gillot in the Roter Hang, and a select few others represent an explosive new force in German Riesling. Typically, they focus on dry styles and promote spontaneous fermentation as a stylistic choice. They belong to Message in a Bottle, an organization of over two dozen young producers in the region committed to raising the region s potential and image, internally and internationally. There are classicists with longer track records of quality wines, such as the Gunderloch estate, which owns three-quarters of Nackenheimer Rothenberg, but much of the energy and excitement today in Rheinhessen is with the experimenters and iconoclasts. As Rheinhessen throws off its old image as a bulk producer, Riesling is not the only beneficiary. It asserted itself as the Rheinhessen s most planted grape as recently as 2013 Rheinhessen held onto Müller-Thurgau as its chief variety longer than any other major Anbaugebiet but it only accounts for 16% of the total vineyard. Dry Silvaner is a regional specialty, and the Rheinhessen has more Silvaner planted than any other region in the world, including Franken. Scheurebe, originally bred at Alzey in the Rheinhessen, maintains a presence and is currently undergoing a small revival of interest domestically. And despite the dangers of frost and wind, the Rheinhessen is a warmer region and it is experiencing a surge in interest for Spätburgunder and the white and grey Burgundy varieties. Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch cast a long shadow over the Rheinhessen, but today one is just as likely to find quality wines from Germany's most diverse selection of varieties here as anywhere else in the country.

30 Page 30 sur 49 Pfalz With nearly one-quarter of Germany s 102,000 hectares of vines, the Pfalz holds Germany s second-largest cache of vineyards, second only to the Rheinhessen, and commands the world s largest acreage of Riesling. There is more Riesling in the Pfalz than in Alsace, or in the whole country of Austria, or Australia, or the United States. In comparison to northerly regions like the Mosel, the Pfalz is warm and sunny, with a modern style of Riesling that is resoundingly dry, offering more body, weight, and alcohol than any other classic Riesling region in Germany. Unlike the Rheingau or Mosel, however, the Pfalz is multidimensional: Dornfelder, Müller- Thurgau, and Portugieser follow Riesling in sheer quantities, while the Pfalz s great vineyards also find room for Spätburgunder, Grauburgunder, Weissburgunder, Scheurebe, and more. (Of these, three Riesling, Spätburgunder, and Weissburgunder are currently authorized for VDP Grosse Lage bottlings.) Like the Rheinhessen, this broad region once harbored only a sliver of renowned vineyards, but today good and great wines are made throughout it. Geographically, the Pfalz lies between Rheinhessen and Alsace. (The region s shifting political allegiance between France and Germany over the past 200 years actually leaves its southernmost vineyards just across the French border in the Alsatian town of Wissembourg.) The Pfalz Anbaugebiet is on the western side of the Upper Rhine Plain, with its best vineyard sites creeping up the Haardt hills a northern, forest-capped extension of the Vosges Mountains. It is divided into two Bereiche: the Mittelhaardt-Deutsche Weinstrasse and the Südliche Weinstrasse, both of which take their name from the wine route, a road opened in 1935 to link the region s picturesque villages and boost tourism. The northern sector, the Mittelhaardt, begins about 20 kilometers south of Worms and encompasses many of the Pfalz s most historic and famous winegrowing villages, including Kallstadt, Ungestein, Forst, Deidesheim, Ruppertsberg, and Gimmeldingen. The Südliche (southern)

31 Page 31 sur 49 Weinstrasse picks up just south of the city of Neustadt and extends through Schweigen at the Alsatian border. In the Mittelhaardt, the landscape is reminiscent of the Côte d Or. Small medieval villages, crowned by church steeples, dot the plain below the east-facing Haardt hills, where the best vineyards sit mid-slope and bask in morning sun, before they are enveloped in the long evening shadow of the Palatinate Forest treeline. Many of the Mittelhaardt s modern Grosse Lage sites were mapped in the 1828 Bavarian Land Registry and have ecclesiastical origins in the 12th and 13th centuries. As in Burgundy, they are often clustered together; the greatest concentration of Grosse and Erste Lage sites occupies a small band of slope between Forst and Deidesheim. And just as the Côte d Or s ownership has fractured since the era of Napoleon, so to has the Pfalz witnessed a subdividing of vineyard parcels with every new generation a trend the German government has attempted to curb by restructuring parcel ownership through its Flurbereinigung campaign, with more successes in the flatter, machine-worked vineyards of the Upper Rhine Plain than the premier sites of the Haardt hillsides. In fact, some of the best Einzellagen in the entire Pfalz region have maintained tight boundaries and tiny parcel ownership despite the 1971 wine law and reallocation under Flurbereinigung. The Grosse Lage vineyards Hohenmorgen in Deidesheim and Freundstück in Forst are both under five hectares in size. At 3.7 hectares, Forster Kirchenstück the Church parcel is the finest, warmest, and most uniform site in the Mittelhaardt, if not the entire Anbaugebiet. Shared by eight owners, enclosed by a small sandstone wall, and planted entirely to Riesling, the small vineyard was classified in 1828 as the Bavarian kingdom s best and sits snugly above the village, nestled between the Grosse Lagen Freundstück, Jesuitengarten, and Ungeheur. Other important sites of the Mittelhaardt include Königsbacher Idig and Gimmeldinger Mandelgarten, both south of Deidesheim, and Kallstadter Saumagen, an amphitheater-like suntrap and the finest site north of Forst. The great hillside vineyards of the Mittelhaardt, sun-drenched and protected from wind and rain by the Drachenfels and other low peaks of the Haardt hills, are rich in history and serve as modern redoubts for exemplary dry Riesling; meanwhile, in the flatter Upper Rhine Plain of the Mittelhaardt, the lion s share of ordinary Pfalz wines are farmed. As the Mittelhaardt has historically been the most important sector of the Pfalz, Mittelhaardtbased producers have long been regarded as standard-bearers for quality in the region. The three Bs Reichsrat von Buhl, Bürklin-Wolf, and Bassermann-Jordan have important legacies and

32 Page 32 sur 49 continue to produce significant quantities of fine wine. (One can compare them side by side only in one vineyard: Kirchenstück.) Koehler-Ruprecht has single-handedly manufactured the reputation of Saumagen, and Müller-Catoir in the village of Haardt continues to prove that classically sweet wines have their place in the Pfalz, producing Riesling, Scheurebe, and Rieslaner in a lusher style. Weingut von Winning is a modern superstar, even as the estate draws criticism for adding new barriques and tonneaux to a Riesling cellar. Yet several of the Pfalz s most important producers today hail from an unlikely location: the south. Until recently, the Südliche Weinstrasse was a region in decline. The warm, sunny southern sector of the Pfalz was a cheap source of bulk wines prior to the passage of the 1971 wine law, and much of its output wound up in Mosel négociant blends. The idea of Qualitätswein from a single region sunk its fortunes, and vineyards fell into disrepair or were abandoned outright. A small series of serious producers, including Ökonomierat Rebholz, Dr. Wehrheim, and Friedrich Becker, resurrected the region s fortunes by the mid-2000s. The rediscovery of sites of great potential, like the Birkweiler Kastanienbusch, an 86-hectare, south-facing slope hidden among the Haardt hills, gave new hope to the region. Less tied to tradition than the Mittelhaardt, the southern Pfalz has provided a more diverse vineyard, with some of Germany s best examples of Weissburgunder and Spätburgunder appearing in vineyards like Siebeldinger im Sonnenschein and Schweiger Kammerberg. In the Südliche Weinstrasse, exposures are more varied, and the best vineyards are frequently steeper than those of the Mittelhaardt. Here, the winegrowing villages are tucked into the hills, rather than aligned neatly along their flank. In 2005, growers in the Pfalz introduced a DC Pfalz category, modeled off the Austrian DAC example. Wines were limited to trocken examples of Riesling, Grauburgunder, Weissburgunder, Spätburgunder, and Dornfelder. However, it appears short-lived and forgotten, with no major producers adopting the designation. Pfalz Soil and Geology As in Alsace, one of the most intriguing aspects of the Pfalz for winegrowers is in its complex geology and soil patterns. Neighboring parcels may have entirely different soil compositions; large vineyards may show multiple, distinct geological underpinnings. It s complicated, and the result of many long years of geological activity and upheaval. Some 250 million years ago, primordial rivers swept alluvial

33 Page 33 sur 49 sediment sand, clay, and silt into the vast plain that would one day become the Pfalz. Compacted over eons and colored by iron oxide, red sandstone today provides the foundation for the Palatinate forest and the Haardt hills. Additionally, volcanic activity pushed magma to the surface of the earth s crust, resulting in layers of basalt, and some 50 million years ago, tectonic activity and the rise of the Alps caused the Rhine basin to collapse. The Haardt hills on the west and the mountains of the Odenwald on the east rose sharply as the land between them sunk and filled with seawater. Over time, the area dried up again, but traces of the sea remained: calcareous deposits from this period of submersion formed limestone (Kalkstein) and shell-limestone (Muschelkalk). As millions of years passed slowly by, water, erosion, and wind filled the Rhine basin with sand, gravel, and loess the latter is the Pfalz s youngest soil, arriving after the last ice age. During that glacial age, rivers of ice advanced into Europe, grinding primary rock beneath them into pulverized, fine grains. As the glaciers retreated with warming temperatures, this dusty combination of pulverized rock and other small sediments loess was unleashed upon the winds, and much of the soil settled beneath the Palatinate Forest in Pfalz. Once covered by vegetation, the loess held firmly in place; today, it is one of the few truly arable soil types still cherished for wine production. Franken The modern Anbaugebiet of Franken lies within the federal state of Bavaria, a region better known for beer than wine. (This is, after all, the part of Germany that produced the Reinheitsgebot in the 16th century.) Today, it ranks sixth among Germany s Anbaugebiete in terms of total vineyard acreage. Franken lies on the Main River, a small Rhine tributary, some 130 kilometers east of the Rheingau. With its inland location, absent the moderating force of a major river, Franken s climate is the most sharply continental of all of Germany s southwestern regions, with very clearly defined seasons, short and hot summers, and bitterly cold winters. As in Washington State, winter s severity threatens to kill vines, and spring frosts are an annual plague on productivity. Franken s climate has never been particularly kind to Riesling, which occupies only 4% of its 6,100 planted hectares and needs the warmest south-facing slopes to thrive. Winter-hardy crossings are popular in the region, and Franken is the only Anbaugebiet

34 Page 34 sur 49 in Germany wherein Müller-Thurgau, at 28% of the vineyard, maintains a commanding lead as the most planted variety. The most traditional variety associated with the region, however, is the mid-ripening Silvaner, which migrated from Austria to Franken during a period of deep, unsettling cold in Europe. Today, it is not Franken s most planted grape, nor is Franken the largest grower of Silvaner in Germany; however, at 20%, Silvaner retains a higher percentage of the total vine acreage here than elsewhere in the country, or the world. The Franken white wine style has traditionally been oriented toward the production of bone dry, austere wines. Silvaner is the most important quality grape, followed by a trickle of Riesling, Weissburgunder, and the occasional compelling red Spätburgunder or Frühburgunder. However, most basic Frankenwein is still nameless, blended from Müller-Thurgau, Bacchus, Kerner, and the like. Franken Silvaner, not unlike Austrian Grüner Veltliner, can produce lighter, slightly herbal, spicy wines in Franken s more common sites and heavy, full-bodied wines in the premiere Grosse Lage vineyards just as in Austria, however, the current trend is to limit alcohol to levels below the 14 to 15% mark in order to retain freshness in the top wines. While Silvaner is a grape that can easily lose varietal character with high yields, its classic hallmarks of phenolics, herbal Franken Silvaner is bottled in the traditional, squat Bocksbeutel. notes, and subtle aromatics shine through with care and reduced crops. As with Riesling, new oak rarely factors into Franken Silvaner wines, but large barrels, concrete eggs, long lees aging, malolactic fermentation, and skin contact are all in play. Only the fashionable technique of spontaneous fermentation shows mixed results with Silvaner Riesling has the acidity to taste dry if a wild ferment gets stuck at 6 or 7 grams per liter of residual sugar; Silvaner does not. Bottled in the traditional, squat Bocksbeutel allegedly shaped like a Roman canteen or, yes, a sheep s scrotum Franken Silvaner is a difficult wine to perfect but a truly distinctive local specialty. First planted by Cistercian monks in Franken in 1659, the grape became the most important variety in Germany, eventually encompassing one-third of the entire national vineyard.

35 Page 35 sur 49 It lost its top spot to Müller-Thurgau in 1969, yet Franken producers stubbornly hang on to this diminishing local treasure. In Franken, there are three Bereiche: Mainviereck, Maindreieck, and Steigerwald. The westernmost reaches of the Anbaugebiet are in Mainviereck, or the four-sided Main, where the river s flow approximates a rectangular shape. Soils here are typically composed of weathered red sandstone, and the climate is gentler than in areas further east. It has therefore emerged as the only natural home for Pinot Noir in Franken. The villages of Klingenberg and Bürgstadt have earned reputations for quality red wine, while marking the earliest known episodes of winegrowing in Franken, which date back to the 8th century. Bürgstadt s Rudolf Fürst is the top name for Spätburgunder in Franken. In the center of Franken, the Main River s course appears to form a triangle this is the Maindreieck, or three-sided Main. With the city of Würzburg on its western edge, Maindreieck produces almost three-quarters of Franken s wine, from shelllimestone soils. Würzburg itself has always been the commercial center of the region, and its famous Stein vineyard, even at 85 hectares in size, has captivated wine drinkers for centuries. A warm, southfacing limestone and loess slope overlooking the Main, Würzburger Stein is planted primarily to Riesling and Silvaner; it produces some of Franken s top examples of both grapes with a touch of trademark smokiness but, like other massive grand cru-styled vineyards, its parcels vary dramatically in intrinsic worth. (It also showcases the German willingness to manipulate terrain: the soils here have been replenished and replaced over the course of hundreds of years.) The most important landholders of Stein are Juliusspital, Franken s largest producer, and Bürgerspital both charitable hospital (Spital) foundations financed by large winemaking operations. The last Bereich, Steigerwald, is located on the eastern end of Franken. Its vineyards are often removed from the immediate environs of the Main River and less subject to humidity and botrytis. With vineyards on the edge of the Steigerwald mountain forest, reaching almost 400 meters in elevation, this is the highest and coolest district in Franken. However, the region s black, gypsumlaced Keuper soils mitigate low temperatures by warming the vines at night so much so that vines can often produce quality wines even on north-facing slopes. Castell, where Silvaner first appeared in Germany, and Iphofen are the most important villages of the Steigerwald.

36 Page 36 sur 49 The Main River has a tributary, the Tauber River, which converges with it just west of Homburg. The 1971 wine law divided vineyards in the Taubertal, despite sharing similar climate and soil profiles, among three Anbaugebiete: Franken, Baden, and Württemberg. Thus, Baden has a Tauberfranken Bereich, Württemberg has a small slice of the Taubertal near the village of Bad Mergentheim, and a portion of the region remains in the Maindreieck. Baden and Franken producers from the region have the right to bottle in a Bocksbeutel; Württemberg producers do not. A historic region, around 1,000 hectares of vineyards exist, but the climate here is quite marginal for quality grapes, while sunlight hours are fewer here than in any of the three neighboring regions. Silvaner and Riesling are popular varieties, produced in the image of Franken. Nahe The Nahe region, a rolling landscape of vineyards, orchards, meadows, and farms, lies west of Rheinhessen and south of the Rheingau, with the narrow Hünsruck Hochwald highland forest forming its natural western border and separating it from the Mosel Valley. The Nahe is at a geological crossroads, positioned at the intersection of the Mainz and Saar-Nahe Basins and the Rhenish Massif, which comprises the slate Hunsrück hills of the Mosel Valley and the low Taunus and Eifel Mountains of the Rheingau and Ahr. With great variation in topography, soils, and geology, it is not a region from which to expect homogeneity in landscape or wine. The region also falls in a transitional zone between maritime and continental climatic influences. Protected from wind and weather on the north and west by wooded mountains, the region s climate remains mild and dry average annual rainfall is around 500 millimeters (about 20 inches), making the Nahe Germany s driest winegrowing climate. Most precipitation occurs in the summer months rather than over harvest, and frosts are rare. The region itself is named for the Nahe River, a tributary of the Rhine, and most Nahe vineyards are cultivated in the handful of river valleys that intersect the region. The best vineyards are generally located along the course of the Nahe River, but there are hidden pockets of good and even great vineyards in the smaller transverse valleys of its northern tributaries, like the Gräfenbach and Trollbach streams. In the southern Nahe, viticulture occurs sporadically in the Glan and Alsenz river valleys, but memories of these once-important winegrowing regions have dimmed.

37 Page 37 sur 49 The Nahe took its modern shape with the 1971 wine law and now harbors a scattered collection of vines about 4,200 hectares in total, making the Nahe Germany s seventh-largest winegrowing region in terms of acreage. As in much of Germany, white grapes are dominant, comprising 75% of the total area under vine, and Riesling is the star. In the 1960s, the inclination to plant any number of crossings, from Bacchus to Scheurebe to Müller-Thurgau, diversified the Nahe vineyard, even as it lowered its potential. Today, however, Riesling is the only variety permitted by the VDP for Grosse Lage wines. Once-popular Müller-Thurgau and Silvaner have been steadily diminishing in recent years, at the expense of Riesling and red grapes like Dornfelder and Spätburgunder. With refocused attention on Riesling, the best Nahe producers prefer to explore the region s great geological diversity through the lens of a single variety. There is only one Bereich in Nahe Nahetal but the region consists of at least three distinct, classic subregions renowned for quality Riesling along the Nahe River itself: the Upper, Middle, and Lower Nahe. (The vineyards surrounding Bad Kreuznach, which divides the Middle and Lower Nahe, are sometimes considered a separate subregion.) In the Upper and Middle Nahe sectors, the river meanders eastward for 25 kilometers, with vineyards generally planted on dramatic, south-facing slopes along its northern bank. In proximity to the Hunsrück hills, climate tends to be slightly cooler than in the Lower Nahe. The Upper Nahe sector extends from the villages of Monzingen and Martinstein at the far western end of the Anbaugebiet to the small town of Schlossböckelheim. At Monzingen, the Nahe River Valley is wider and slightly warmer, and there are good sites for Riesling. (Unfortunately, its best and most historic site, Frühlingsplätzchen, was expanded from less than 8 hectares to 64 with the 1971 wine law, and it can no longer be considered exemplary in its entirety.) Emrich-Schönleber, based in Monzingen, is the preeminent producer of the Upper Nahe, and in the 21st century, the Shäfer-Fröhlich estate of Bockenau, a village in the Upper Nahe s hinterlands nearest the Hünsruck hills, rapidly ascended into the ranks of Nahe nobility. The Middle Nahe follows the course of the river eastward for 15 kilometers from Schlossböckelheim to Bad Kreuznach, the Nahe s largest town and the commercial center of the region s wine trade. The river narrows and the valley cools just west of Schlossböckelheim, flowing by Oberhausen, Niederhausen (where the Nahe widens briefly again at a hydroelectric dam), Norheim, and the massive, sheer Rotenfels porphyry cliffs of Traisen before turning sharply northward at Bad Münster am Stein, a spa town (bad means bath) and southern suburb of Bad Kreuznach. The towns of the Middle Nahe are the most famous winegrowing

38 Page 38 sur 49 villages of the Nahe, with numerous Grosse Lage sites, including Niederhauser Hermannshöhle, Schlossböckelheimer Kupfergrube, Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg, Norheimer Dellchen, Traiser Bastei, and Oberhauser Brücke, the last of these a monopole of Nahe s foremost producer, Weingut Dönnhoff. Situated on weathered volcanic soils, slate, limestone, and schist, these great vineyards were recognized and classified according to property tax valuations as early as 1901, in a map depicting the vineyard areas in the district of Koblenz. The state winery of Niederhausen- Schlossböckelheim, now known as Gut Hermannsberg, shepherded the reputation of many of these sites through a difficult 20th century, yet it is Dönnhoff who provides the clearest emblem of uncompromising wine quality today. From these vineyards, sweeter Riesling wines can be pure and slim, recalling the Mosel, and top dry examples show concentration without corpulence. Just north of Bad Kreuznach, the soil composition becomes heavier with clay and loess, and the Lower Nahe stretches from the town s northern limits to the river s confluence with the Rhine at Bingen, marking the tripoint of the Rheinhessen, the Rheingau, and the Nahe Anbaugebiete. The Lower Nahe is a warmer region than either the Upper or Middle Nahe, with more climatic similarity to the neighboring Rheinhessen than the cooler Hunsrück hills to the west. Riesling styles from the Lower Nahe share the fuller body and more opulent style of the Rheinhessen, and Spätburgunder performs best in the Lower Nahe, even as it is still excluded from Grosse Lage vineyards. From the village of Laubersheim northward, the soil mixture shifts from deeper clay and loess to the slate and quartzite more common across the Rhine. The Lower Nahe s most renowned winegrowing villages lie in this northern sector: Münster-Sarmsheim, Dorsheim, and Laubersheim itself. Schlossgut Diel, encamped in the nearby town of Burg Layen at a partially ruined castle (the sort that affords rich aristocrats seemingly greater prestige when unrepaired) is the reigning producer of the Lower Nahe. At a recent visit to the estate, Armin Diel summed up the Nahe s progress nicely, explaining, Twenty-five years ago, there was no real idea of what the Nahe style was. Today, that has changed. Baden The winegrowing region of Baden, Germany s third-largest Anbaugebiet, lines the eastern half of the Upper Rhine Valley and runs parallel to Alsace and the Pfalz, between the Rhine River and the Black Forest. Baden extends for nearly 400 kilometers and is divided into nine diverse Bereiche, scattered from the shores of Lake Constance, which separates Germany and

39 Page 39 sur 49 Switzerland, to the edge of the Odenwald hills in Hessische-Bergstrasse and the Tauber River Valley, near Würzburg in Franken. So while it is difficult to generalize about the region s wines, its greatest successes have been with varieties rooted in Burgundy: Weissburgunder, Grauburgunder, and above all, Spätburgunder. The trio accounts for three of Baden s four most planted grapes, and Spätburgunder alone makes up one-third of Baden s almost 16,000 hectares under vine. White grapes still account for a slim majority overall, however. In the northerly Bereiche of Tauberfranken, Badische Bergstrasse, and Kraichgau, and in the Bodensee (the German name for Lake Constance) Bereich in the south, Müller-Thurgau still reigns as the top variety, making it the second most planted variety overall in Baden. (On the Swiss side of Lake Constance is the small winegrowing canton of Thurgau, where the grape s breeder Hermann Müller was born.) Reinforcing its proximity to Switzerland, more than 1,000 hectares of Gutedel (Chasselas) remain in Baden. In Germany, the Swiss grape is cultivated almost exclusively in the Markgräferland Bereiche at Baden s southernmost point, where the Anbaugebiet meets the Swiss city of Basel and the French border. Pinot Noir allegedly arrived in Baden in the escort of Carolingian Emperor Charles the Fat, who planted it on the north shores of Lake Constance in 884. In over a thousand years, the center of German Pinot Noir production didn t move far, landing in four Baden Bereiche between the city of Freiburg and the Black Forest bath town of Baden-Baden. From north to south, they are Ortenau, Breisgau, Kaiserstuhl, and Tuniberg. As in Alsace, these areas have dynamic soil profiles, with various granitic, volcanic, calcareous, and loess formations. On weathered limestone, with their backs against the Black Forest, 20 kilometers or more from the Rhine, the vineyards of Breisgau can produce an almost Côte de Nuits-like style of Pinot Noir. (See the wines of the late Bernhard Huber in Malterdingen.) In the Kaiserstuhl, however, the weather warms, the wines become more muscular, and the vines lie nearly within reach of the river s banks. The compact district, which occupies a chain of hills rising steeply above the river west of Freiburg, supplies some of the Upper Rhine Valley s most splendid, dramatic scenery and the Kaiserstuhl is likewise Baden s most celebrated zone for Spätburgunder. The Kaiserstuhl hills crown an extinct volcano, draped in varying layers of loess. The district experiences Germany s warmest and sunniest winegrowing climate in warm vintages, Spätburgunder passing the 15% mark is not unheard of and it is protected from wet weather by the rain shadow of the Vosges Mountains. Kaiserstuhl s best Spätburgunder sites are often its steepest, with purer volcanic soils rather than windblown loess, such as Achkarrer Schlossberg and Ihringer Winklerberg, Germany s hottest vineyard. If anything, Kaiserstuhl s greatest

40 Page 40 sur 49 viticultural liability is one sommeliers don t usually associate with Germany: too much sun, too much heat, too much potential alcohol. Kaiserstuhl has a subregion of sorts, the Tuniberg Bereich, which formally separated from Kaiserstuhl in Situated on calcareous rather than volcanic subsoil, Tuniberg has a more thorough distribution of loess and loess-loam topsoils, but its wines have not achieved the same fame as those of Kaiserstuhl. Overall, the Baden style of Spätburgunder, exemplified by the Kaiserstuhl wines, is ripe and robust. These wines are richer in body and lower in acidity than Ahr examples. Chaptalization is still practiced, even as Baden is the only German Anbaugebiet that enters the EU s Climate Zone B, with lower limits on the amount of sugar that may be added to bolster alcohol. In the warmer climate, partial whole-cluster fermentations are not uncommon. Luxurious treatment in new oak is a frequent feature for the best wines often it is French in origin, but Baden oak from the Black Forest is a common sight in cellars as well (which, after all, is essentially Vosges oak, save for a national boundary). In the Baden vineyard, an important reconsideration involves the adoption of Dijon clones, once thought essential to success in the Burgundy model. As in Russian River, Baden is just too warm for these grapes, and producers are starting to take a fresh look at Swiss Mariafeld clones and some new German clones, newly selected for quality rather than yield. Alongside Spätburgunder, the VDP permits the production of Weissburgunder, Grauburgunder, Riesling, and Chardonnay as Grosse Lage wines throughout Baden. Weissburgunder is produced in nearly as a wide a range of styles as Chardonnay. Basic examples are usually fresh and fairly neutral while top Grosse Lage wines gain weight, incurring malolactic fermentation and new oak aging. Some are oxidative in style and some are more reductive, in the manner of top white Burgundy. The barrique-fermented, richer style of Weissburgunder is especially prevalent among producers in Kaiserstuhl, where the grape comprises about 10% of the total production. Grauburgunder, which has achieved more success in Baden than elsewhere in Germany, is typically dry and golden in color. Skin contact, drawing out Pinot Gris coppery tones, is routine. Grosse Lage Grauburgunder is rarely produced outside of Baden, and here it is almost always dry. (Sweeter styles, when made, are usually labeled under the synonym Ruländer.) Finally, great full-bodied Riesling can be produced in Baden, particularly in Ortenau and Kraichgau, recalling the short distance to Alsace. But there is little viticultural exchange; as one Baden winemaker confides, vintners on either side of the border rarely cross the river.

41 Page 41 sur 49 Württemberg Württemberg, one of Germany s largest growing regions, is also largely undiscovered by international audiences. As Baden s neighbor, the southerly Anbaugebiet of Württemberg specializes in red wines to a degree exceeded by none other than the tiny Ahr. It represents Germany s fourth-largest collection of vineyards, with over 11,000 hectares of vines, and 70% of its total acreage is devoted to red grapes. But thus far, the only real international success for German red wine to date has been Pinot Noir, which Baden and the Ahr have rallied behind. Not so with Württemberg: the most planted grape in this diverse region is Trollinger, better known as Schiava in Italy. Popular domestically, Trollinger is unlikely to win international audiences over. The region contains a significant amount of Lemberger (Blaufränkisch), which critics admit is far likelier than Dornfelder to achieve greatness, but it is subject to marketing woes its German name is unknown, leaving producers to vacillate over promoting its local moniker or supporting the more well-known Austrian name. Schwarzriesling (Meunier) is a local specialty; German cultivation of the Champagne grape is almost exclusive to Württemberg, where it typically produces light, fruity, quaffable wines. Riesling is the most planted white grape in the region and the second most planted grape overall. Schillerwein, a specialized style of rosé wine, is unique to the Württemberg region. Alongside pink Champagne, it is one of the few styles of European rosés for which blending is permitted. For Schillerwein, it is the rule. Historically, the pale pink wine was composed of a field blend of red and white grapes, crushed and fermented together. Today, the red and white lots are blended prior to fermentation to achieve the wine s bright rosy color its name derives from the German verb schillern, which means to shimmer or scintillate. They are typically light, trocken or halbtrocken in style, and contain 11 to 12.5% finished alcohol. In Württemberg, where per capita drinking is highest in all of Germany, the wine is gulped rather than sipped, traditionally from stemless glass mugs common in the region s wine taverns. Like Baden, Württemberg is divided into far-flung sectors. It contains a cluster of northern Bereiche situated around the cities of Stuttgart and Heilbronn, and a small set of vineyards along the north shores of Lake Constance. In the north, vines are cultivated along the Neckar River and its tributaries, such as the Kocher, Jagst, Tauber, and Rems. (The Neckar itself is a major tributary of the Rhine; the rivers meet just south of Worms.) Württemberg s largest

42 Page 42 sur 49 concentration of vineyards is in the Württembergisch Unterland Bereich between the capital city of Stuttgart and Heilbronn, and, due to its proximity to the population, there is an up-andcoming set of independent, quality-minded projects in the Remstal-Stuttgart Bereich, just east of the capital. Nearly three-quarters of the production, however, is still concentrated in the hands of regional cooperatives. One of Württemberg s most famous estate producers is Weingut Graf Neipperg of Schwaigern. Owner Karl Neipperg is the latest in a long line of lords whose presence in Württemberg can be traced to the 12th century; however, his brother, Stephan von Neipperg of Saint-Émilion, is easily the more widely recognized figure in the wine world today. Ahr One of Germany s smallest and most northerly winegrowing regions, the Ahr Valley has nonetheless earned a reputation as one of the country s best spots for Spätburgunder. The grape, along with its early-ripening mutation Frühburgunder, accounts for almost 70% of the Ahr s planted acreage. (In contrast, Riesling accounts for only 8% of the total Ahr vineyard.) The region may be tiny, but the Pinot Noir grape maintains a tighter grip on vineyards here than anywhere else in Germany. And it has come a long way. In his 1988 book Life After Liebfraumilch: Understanding German Fine Wine, Stuart Pigott denuded Ahr reds, labeling the category as presumptuous rosés in a puddle of mediocrity. Robert Parker was even less charitable, writing off German Spätburgunder entirely as abortive. (Nice, Bob.) Today, top Ahr Spätburgunder from the estates of Jean Stodden, Meyer-Näkel, J.J. Adeneuer, and others experiences great domestic and international demand, commanding high prices and acclaim. The terroir is distinctive: Ahr Spätburgunder is a rare example of slate-grown Pinot Noir, and its admirers attribute a smoky undertone to this unique union of grape and soil. The Ahr River is really more of a creek, meandering 25 kilometers eastward from Altenahr at the region s western edge through Ahrweiler, Walporzeim, and Bad Neuenahr, finally meeting the Rhine near Heimersheim. Its vineyards span about 125 meters in elevation. The slopes here can be just as steep reaching 60 to 70% grade or more and slate-covered as those in the Mosel, but the river is too small and removed from the vineyards to have any great impact on vineyard temperature and vine. For ease of comparison, growers divide the valley into the Upper Ahr west of Walporzheim and the Lower Ahr, spanning the remaining distance to the river s confluence with the Rhine. The Lower Ahr Valley is more densely planted, with more basalt-derived clay and

43 Page 43 sur 49 sand atop dark slate. It is also warmer, with harvests occurring on average 10 days earlier than in the Upper Ahr Valley. Because of this, Lower Ahr wines exhibit a more opulent character. Some of the most ancient vineyards, however, are further west. In the nearly pure slate soils of the Upper Ahr Valley, phylloxera is nonexistent, and there are a few century-old vineyards, still trained in the single-post system. The region s full turn toward red wine production began in earnest in the 1980s, with Meyer- Näkel in the village of Dernau leading the charge. In that era, many Ahr wines, as Pigott rightly criticized, were essentially rosés and not infrequently off-dry, either. Blauer Portugieser was a popular grape alongside Pinot Noir. Following a generational change, Meyer-Näkel pivoted its gaze toward Burgundy and began emphasizing dryness, abandoning thermovinification, employing longer macerations, and aging in French oak barrels. Others took notice, and a revolution in style began. Guyot training replaced the traditional single-post system in serious vineyards, providing more sun exposure in the Ahr s northerly climate. Dijon clones of Pinot Noir and new clones from Geisenheim, selected for quality, began to appear alongside the Swiss Mariafeld clones and German clones more often selected for high yields and cold hardiness. Today, Ahr Spätburgunder is among Germany s finest, even as its output is still miniscule in comparison to more massive regions like Baden and Pfalz. How has a region north of the 50th parallel managed such success when areas to its south, like the Mosel, have trouble reliably ripening red grapes? Aided by its east-west orientation, the Ahr Valley benefits from the moderating influence of the Gulf Stream, and the growing season here is longer than in nearby regions like Mittelrhein or the Mosel. The whole region is a canyon, protected from wind and rain amidst the low Eifel Mountains. In this rain shadow, sunlight hours are correspondingly higher, and the region experiences fewer bouts of botrytis than the Mosel. But it is still a cool climate winegrowing region, with an average annual temperature of only 9.8 C (49.5 F). The dark slate soils of Ahr vineyards store heat for chilly evenings, and south-facing aspects are essential. All of the Ahr s best vineyards and Grosse Lage sites are on steep slopes above the river s northern banks. Despite the threat of erosion, almost all Ahr vineyard rows run down the slopes (north-south) in order to maximize sun exposure. Whole-cluster fermentations are essentially unknown since stems remain green, and chaptalization is common. We can t be Öchsle fetishists, retorts Jean Stodden. We need ripeness, not sugar. We are so far north; you can always add sugar.

44 Page 44 sur 49 Frühburgunder, known in France as Pinot Noir Precocé, has replaced Portugieser as the second most planted red variety in the Ahr. (It is genetically the same variety, but producers in the Ahr traditionally treat it as distinct.) Frühburgunder is a troublesome grape to get right. It is ready for harvest about two weeks before Spätburgunder a period in which it is the only ripe fruit or berry in the region, making it a prime target for wasps and birds (and tourists...) and necessitating netting. It s also a ready victim of millerandage. Frühburgunder develops thicker skins than Spätburgunder, with more color and less acidity in the glass. Fruit flavors become concentrated and liqueur-like, and the wine often has more richness and immediate approachability than Ahr Spätburgunder. Mittelrhein With less than 500 hectares of vines, Mittelrhein is one of Germany s smallest Anbaugebiete. Adjacent to the Rheingau, the Mittelrhein winegrowing region follows the course of the Rhine River 120 kilometers northward from Bacharach to Bonn. The city of Koblenz, where the Mosel and Rhine rivers meet, is located in Mittelrhein, as is the confluence of the Ahr and Rhine. As the Rhine River resumes its northward course after a shift west in the Rheingau, it enters a narrow, spectacular gorge. Majestic medieval castles stud its banks and slopes. This is the Middle Rhine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an important historical crossroads of culture and trade. The Mittelrhein marked a past divide between areas of French influence and Prussian control, as the narrow, restrictive gorge created an ideal boundary. Its many ruined castles suggest the ease with which local rulers could extract tolls from commercial vessels on this stretch of the river. Two Bereiche, Loreley and Siebengebirge, neatly divide the slim Mittelrhein region into southern and northern sectors. The vast majority of the Mittelrhein s vineyards and all of its Grosse Lage sites are located within the southern Bereich of Loreley, which stretches from Bacharach past Koblenz to the village of Unkel. In an old dialect, Loreley roughly translates to murmuring rock, referring to a massive slate promontory jutting sharply upward from the Rhine s right bank, spawning old legends of siren songs plaguing boatmen below. Siebengebirge, the northernmost winegrowing area in western Germany, is a cluster of uplifted hills of volcanic origin southeast of Bonn. (There are 40, not sieben.) It is a much less

45 Page 45 sur 49 significant winegrowing district, and fewer than two dozen hectares of vines remain under cultivation. In Loreley and throughout Mittelrhein, Riesling is the most planted variety the grape accounts for almost 70% of the total acreage. With the steep slopes of the Rhine gorge and its Devonian slate soils, conditions are similar to those in the Mosel, but the south-facing orientations essential to producing great Riesling are much rarer in the Mittelrhein. A couple of superior, south-facing sites (Bopparder Hamm, Oberweseler Ölsberg) are perched along sharp bends in the Rhine, but most of the Mittelrhein s best vineyards are secluded in side valleys in Bacharach and Oberwesel. Stylistically, Riesling producers in Mittelrhein have more interest in trocken and halbtrocken styles of wine than those in the Mosel for the 2014 vintage, 65% of Mittelrhein s production was recorded as dry or off-dry, while the majority of Mosel wines were still clocking in at lieblich (medium sweet) or süss. Hessische-Bergstrasse Hessische-Bergstrasse is the smallest Anbaugebiet in Germany, both in physical sizes and hectares planted to the vine. It s 50 kilometers due south of the city of Frankfurt and aligned in latitude with the southern Rheinhessen, 30 kilometers to its west. Historically, the Bergstrasse s vineyards constituted a sort of satellite region for the Rheingau, as they were once among the thousands of hectares tended by the Cistercian monks of Kloster Eberbach. Today, less than 500 hectares remain along the Hessen Mountain Road, gently sloping downward from the Odenwald hills into the valley of the Rhine River. Most are clustered around the village of Heppenheim in the Starkenburg Bereich, but there is a small island of vineyards further north, nearer to the Main River and separated from the remainder, which comprises the Umstadt Bereich. Prior to 1971, the Bergstrasse region included an additional swath of land past its current southern border, but the new wine law cleaved it in two. The new Anbaugebiet remained within the borders of the federal state of Hessen, while vineyards to the south were annexed by Baden to become Bereich Badische-Bergstrasse. The region is colloquially known as the spring garden, signaling a transition in phase from the cooler areas to its immediate north to the warmer growing region of Baden directly south of it. Riesling is still the region s most planted grape variety, accounting for 45% of the total acreage,

46 Page 46 sur 49 but the wines rarely achieve the same tense acidity as those produced in the Rheingau. Not that many have the opportunity to find out Hessische-Bergstrasse wines are usually consumed locally and infrequently exported. Over than half of the region s acreage is under the control of the Bergstrasse Winzer eg cooperative, located in the village of Heppenheim. One reminder of the region s past link to the Rheingau remains: the largest vineyard holding (35 planted hectares) belongs to Kloster Eberbach and the state winery, Hessische Staatsweingüter. Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut Following Germany s 1990 reunification, the country s total number of Anbaugebiete increased from 11 to 13 with the addition of two areas previously under East German rule, Saale-Unstrut and Sachsen (Saxony). At 51 N latitude, these are Germany s northernmost winegrowing regions, far to the east of the country s more renowned vineyards. Sachsen, which follows the course of the Elbe River through Dresden to Meissen, is near the Czech border; the namesake river valleys of Saale and Unstrut are about 150 kilometers west of Sachsen, near Leipzig. Both areas have supported viticulture for many centuries Sachsen s first documented vineyard appeared at a local bishop s behest in 1161, and Benedictine monks were tending vines in Saale- Unstrut by the late 900s but phylloxera and two world wars took a toll, reducing the thousands of hectares and proud histories in each region to a smattering of vines by the 1950s. The few remaining estates in Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut functioned as state-run cooperative wineries during the communist era; quality winemaking was not in the program. Today, however, each region is experiencing a minor renaissance. With almost 800 hectares in the ground in 2016, Saale-Unstrut is Germany s fastest-growing region, and Sachsen, led by Schloss Proschwitz the region s largest estate and the first VDP member in Saxony is making good wines, even if most of them never make it further afield than a Dresden tavern. White grapes radically outnumber reds in both Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut. As a reminder of their cool continental climates, as well as both regions recent entries into the quality wine business, Müller-Thurgau remains the most planted variety in each region. (Riesling will likely overtake it in Sachsen in 2017 or 2018.) Average must weights are lower here than in southwestern Germany. One local specialty claimed by Sachsen is Goldriesling, a grape crossing developed in 1893 at the Oberlin Institute in Alsace. The grape is not commercially farmed in Alsace and claims only about

47 Page 47 sur 49 a dozen hectares in Sachsen. Several estates make dry to off-dry, lively, aromatic wines with the rare variety. BACK TO TOP Bibliography GuildSomm would like to thank Romana Echensperger, MW, for her help in reviewing this guide. Micah Winecoff Awesome guide! I did notice it says Germany has the second most ha of Pinot Gris planted in the world and in the Grapes section of Compendium it appears the U.S.A. has more plantings. The years listed for when the data is different in the Compendium than this guide though. Which is correct? Parag LALIT Incredible, makes so much more sense. Thanks. Matt Stamp Micah Winecoff the Grapes compendium has USA amounts listed in acres and Germany in hectares. You just have to convert. Frank Kämmer Hi Matt, this is an outstanding work, well done! I assume that this is a great help for every non-native German somm. I've read it very carefully twice but even from my German perspective I could not find any error which is rare, given the bloody complicated nature of the topic (even the Umlauts are correct! I assume thanks to Romana ;-). There is only one little detail that is not precisely correct: There is no slate in Rheingau, schist would be correct. The misunderstanding often occurs because of the fact that we commonly use the same word in German for both (Schiefer), but actually it should be Tonschiefer = slate (like at the Mosel) and kristalliner Schiefer = schist. Matt Stamp Hey come on Frank Kämmer! Most of those umlauts were in place!! I mean, Romana fixed a couple... ;) stefen soltysiak misprint in the section on Scheurebe, a cross between Riesling and Bukettrebe, not Bumoseltkettrebe as published. Might want to consider the synonym Bukettraube instead.

48 Page 48 sur 49 Matt Stamp stefen soltysiak that's awesome. I have no idea how that happened. (I swear my word draft says Bukettrebe!) Stupid internet. :) Phil Laramore This is fantastic and packed with great useful information that combines a lot of disjointed information in my head. One note; on the Prädikatswein Minimum Must Weight Ranges side bar it lists Mosel Spatlese at 73 Öchsle when the compendium lists it as 80 Öchsle.I believe the 73 Öchsle level is for Kabinett Mosel Riesling. Frank Kämmer Phil is right, 73 is Kabinett. Check here for the official document for the 2015 vintage: Eckdaten MOSEL 2015.pdf by the way: there is even a minimum must weight explicitly specified for Mosel Dornfelder TBA! OMG! I have to admit that some of the clichés about us Germans are actually true... hahaha! Matt Stamp 80 is correct for Spätlese in the Mosel, 73 for Kabinett. I fixed the typo here. Laura Jeffrey I've really enjoyed reading this updated information on Germany, the regions and grape varieties currently planted, and flourishing. The maps are a great resource as well as I study for my Certified Somm test next month. Thank you! Christopher Ramelb Thank you so much for this great addition! Guy Wachs Big fan of German wine from Baden like Gut Nagelforst Pinot Noir Prestige & Pinot Blanc..zum whole Ante Dapic Fantastic read! Thank you. Little help here please: Is it true to assume that halbtrocken ("half-dry") is sweeter than trocken (dry)? If "Classic was intended to replace trocken, and Selection halbtrocken, then how come there is MORE RS mandated for trocken "Classic" (15 g/l) than it is for halbtrocken "Selection" (9 g/l)? Shouldn't it be vice versa? Julie Dupouy Hello. Quick question that I am hoping someone might be able to clarify. When I look at there is only the mention of 19 Landwein regions yet 26 are mentioned above.