German Wines

Most people think of beer as the characteristic German beverage, but Germany also produces some very distinctive and unique wines.

The grape is the Riesling. Other grapes are grown in Germany (e.g., Sylvaner, Muller-Thurgau), but I don't recommend them.

The Riesling is a very misunderstood grape and wine. It is intended to be a desert wine; that means sweet wine, and that is where many people start to have trouble. "Desert wines" are called such because they are meant to be served with - desert!! A big, tannic, red wine just won't go with desert. We need a sweet wine, to complement the sweetness of the desert, but it's not quite that simple. Many sweet wines are flat, flabby, and awful. The sweetness can be used to cover up poor quality.

In addition to the sweetness, the wine needs balance, structure,and acidity. That is what makes them hard to produce. Examples are true port, sauternes, German riesling, and Hungarian tokay. These are some of the world's truly great wines, but they are desert wines.

In Germany, the Riesling grape reaches it's full potential and produces what some regard as the world's best white wine. Sometimes. Germay is a cold country, and in many years, the weather is such that the grapes don't ripen sufficiently, so no good wine can be produced. Unsuccessful vintages are so spectacularly unsuccessful that many times the grapes are simply discarded or sold in bulk to the producers of sekt or cheap, jug wines. But, as Hugh Johnson says, "When the sun shines and the Riesling ripens and goes on ripening far into October, the great bosomy smell of flowers and honey which it generates would be too lush without the apply emphasis of acidity. Then the Saar (a region in Germany) comes into its own. It makes sweet wines which you can never tire of. The balance and depth make you sniff and sip and sniff again".

The secret is a balance of sugar with acidity. In years when it comes out right, there is nothing else like a German riesling.

Most of the good vineyads are on hillsides beside rivers (Mosel, Saar,Ruwer, Rhein), sometimes so steep that they literally use ladders to get up into the vineyard. The soil is mostly slate. The best vineyards usually face south, where they have the greatest chance of getting enough sunlight to ripen the grapes

The quality of a German wine is detemined by the amount of natural sugar in the juice. The more, the better. There are four terms that are used to indicate this level of sweetness and quality: spatlese, auslese, beerenauslese, trockenbeerenauslese.

Spatlese means "late harvest". This occurs in years when the weather co-operates and the grapes can be left on the vine longer than usual, making them riper and higher in sugar content. Next up the quality scale is auslese. This is a wine made from selected bunches (the ripest) of late harvest grapes. Beerenauslese means "selected berry picking"; they take the ripest individual grapes and segregate them. Very labor intensive, and very expensive. Finally, there is trockenbeerenauslese. Here, the super-ripe grapes are attacked on the vine by the botrytis mold, which has the effect of taking water out of the berries and concentrating the juice. It produces a wine that can best be described as comparable to a true Sauternes.

Since the location of the vineyard plays a large role in determining the chances of the grapes to ripen, it is important in evaluating a German wine to be able to determine exactly where the grapes were grown. The best vineyards are well established in certain wine villages. Thus, label reading is important with German wines. In general, a top German wine will indicate on the label the village and vineyard where the grapes were grown. Thus, Piesporter Goldtropchen is made from grapes grown in the Goldtropchen vineyard in the village of Piesport (much like a person from New York is a New Yorker). Berkasteler Doktor is from the Doktor vineyard in Berkastel. Zeltinger Sonnennuhr. Etc.

These German wines from top vineyards will always be very expensive. Buy one sometime to see what the excitement is all about. Then, for value, look for a generic German Riesling not from a named vineyard. It won't be as spectacular, but good inexpensive ones can be found, and that is our mission.

A final comment: I am not a fan of California Rieslings. They all seem flabby to me. Surprisingly enough, Virginia does produce some interesting Riesling wine (Jefferson Vineyards, Abingdon Vineyards).