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About German Wine Part I

Imagine making wine for 1000 years and developing an evolving number of rules to improve the wine and celebrate the best wines of the region.  It was a good idea, until the label was decorated with so many terms that it looked like a war hero where all their bags and medallions to a point you couldn’t determine the rank.

Today, German wine has an interesting problem, there is a lot of wine, but its owned by hundreds of brands, all small, and all hoping to purchase more land  but there isn’t any great land to purchase. As the economy dictates, wineries do end up selling and small advances can be made but most of the advances are in the areas of different wines, even none Riesling wines that do not need to come from the great vineyards that are carved in the southern facing slopes.  Modern advances with none Riesling grapes give financial growth but may undermine the true Nobel status of the Riesling and I think everyone realizes this is the wine that matters in the end.

The Soft Economy

Today, the German industry realizes now that a majority of their business is in the United States, what they probably knew years ago before the market developed the US customer only speaks and understands English and has no appreciation for the tradition of German wine law.

The following wine label terms you will find on the label.

Weingut means winery

Gutsablung means Estate Bottled

Not all German wines are Riesling, but the noble wines are.  I will speak about the wine laws as they apply to the Riesling in the fine quality wine category, also known as Qualitatswein or Qualitatswein mit Praditkat  which describes the ripeness of the wine in terms of total must weight of sugar or Oechsle.

ONE: The wines typically have the name of the Weingut on the top

Weingut Dr. Robert Weil (producer name)

or

Weingut S.A PRUM (producer name)

TWO:  Then the name of the place is celebrated, where? in Germany the grapes came from. This gets pretty specific as the families that make the wine may own a very small plot of land inside of the vineyard.  So small that the flavors are very consistent year to year and vintage quality is the variable.

First, the name of the location and add them to the name of the place.

(in regards to Weingut Robert Weil)

Kiedricher Klosterberg (however the name is now being dropped to make it simple)

Kiedrich Klosterberg (meaning from the area of Kiedrich, in the vineyard of Klosterberg)

Or

(in regards to Weingut S.A. PRUM)

Urziger Wurstgarden

From the town of Urzig, the vineyard called Wurstgarden (spice garden)

So the names of the fancy places are many so don’t let them hang you up.  Some are more famous than others, and the most famous are being celebrated now with a  Grand Cru status (new since 2007).

THREE:

Next is the ranking of Pradikat the Quality and or quantity of the ripeness as measured, and ranked.

The names are

Kabinett  ripe but focus is on the slate character and minerality.

Spatlase  riper with more juice per grape than Auslese.

Auslese  can have some botrytis, but unnoticeable as possible.

Beeren Auslese  can have significant botrytis, more than the Auslese and very ripe grapes are used, some with juice and some with raisin character

Trockenbeeren Auslese  this is the highest quality or the Botrytis infected wines, and the berries are all infected with little to no juice.

Icewine No Botrytis  must be frozen berry and is typically picked around Christmas or early January.

For more on German Wine Laws CLICK HERE