Good Morning!

I received an email from a wonderful woman who ask me about why I never mention German wines. She told me her parents were German and they came to the states and both are gone now, but she wondered about her heritage and the wines from her parents homeland.

Well, I have to be honest, I am not sure I have ever had a German wine. If I did try one, I was not aware that I was trying it. When I was fairly young, 22 and pretty much fresh outta college I went to Germany for 3 weeks. I was there to help with a CAD training class. CAD stands for Computer Aided Design and I was not a trainer, but we had this product design system at the plant where I worked as a designer. I honestly think I was ask to go because I was young, did not have a bunch of training myself and they did not want me teaching any of the designers any bad habits on the software. Now, most companies design with solid modeling and parametric driven software, so if you are reading this and thinking, I might be as old as the original Atari…well, I remember playing Pong!

Anyway, we landed in Germany around Mid October and came home the 2nd week in November, so it was Octoberfest, Beer is KING! I was only 22 and might have weighed 125 pounds soaking wet. Even though I was pretty much a year out of school, I was not a heavy weight beer drinker, but the guys I were with were on a mission to drink every waking minute that we were not working. I loved the pageantry of Octoberfest, the music, outfits the total feel of celebration and I did consume my weight in beer during those 3 weeks.

Back to the USA and add 27 years on to my life experiences and you have me sitting here wondering if I have ever had German wine. So, I did a little research and thought I would share with you what I learned. Germany is home to the northernmost premium vineyards in the world and it is a very cool climate. They make mostly whites and Riesling is King of Whites followed by Gewurztraminer and then Muller-Thurgau. The top red is Pinot Noir but they call it Spatburgunder and overall Germany is ranked 9th in wine production world wide.

There are 4 top wine regions Mosel, Pfatz, Rheinhessen and Rheingau and most are located near the Rhine River in the warmer southwestern area of the country. The German wine laws and quality classifications are mostly built around the sugar content of the grapes at harvest time.

The levels of quality are as follows:

Lowest level quality and ripeness level is Tafelwein, which means “Table wine”.

Next level up in quality and ripeness is called Landwein, which means “Land wine”.

Next level up in quality and ripeness is called Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete, which means “Quality Wines from Recognized Regions”. (QbA)

The highest level of quality and ripeness is called Qualitatswein mit Pradikat, which means “Quality Wines with Special Attributes”. (QmP)

Ok, now let’s tackle the 6 styles of wine and what to look for on the label of a German wine.

Kabinett, This means the grapes were picked at the normal harvest time and this wine should be “dry” to “semi-sweet”, this should be a 7-10% alcohol wine with a high level of acidity.

Spatlese, This means this is a late harvest wine, these grapes will have been picked 2-3 weeks after the Kabinett, these wines will have more body and alcohol, could be 10-14% alcohol.

Auslese, means select harvest, which means only select bunches of grapes are hand harvested, this is predominately dessert wines and sometimes this wine can go past 14% alcohol.

Beerenauslese or (BA), means berries select harvest, these are some of the sweetest, rarest and richest wines found. These grapes have been naturally infected with edelfaule (noble not or botrytis). The high acid in this wine will balance out the sweetness, so it will not taste sugary, but the more time to mature in bottle the more AWESOME this wine will become.

Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) means this is made from the highest sugar concentration at harvest in Germany. These are ultra-ripe infected with botrytis grapes and they are allowed to shrivel and leaving them with the highest concentrated sugars, this produces the richest, most intense dessert wines in the world.

Wow, I just blasted you with a ton of information about laws and German wine ripeness levels…yikes, I promised when I started this blog not to drag you down with too much info..but today, I might have overstepped my bounds. I am sorry, but I have found German wines to be very interesting. I went out and bought 2 bottles to try this weekend and I will report back after I try them!

Catch you tomorrow!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi