GORDON DUFF: HISTORY OF GERMAN WINES

Early History of German Wines

 

 

By Gordon Duff

 As far as we can tell, Romans began the earliest vineyards along the west bank of the Rhine

during the 1st century.  By the 3rd century, Roman slaves were completing the terracing

along the Mosel, eventually reaching Trier.  Trier was one of the largest cities in the Empire

at that time and later, after the fall of Rome, was destined to be the Empire’s capital.  With

these first terraces making vineyards possible on the steep vertical slopes of the Mosel valley,

the first wines moved down the Mosel to the Rhine and Rome over 1800 years ago.  In the

town of Piesport, between Bernkastel and Trier you can still see a 4th century Roman Wine

press.

 

In the Pfalz region, the Romans dedicated the fertile Rhine plain to conventional agriculture

and planted the gentle hillsides in vines.  Here, the warmer climate than that of the Mosel

Valley made possible a less demanding regimen of vineyard management with its longer

growing seasons.

 

After the Roman Era, the only historical record of wine making is from Monasteries who

used wine as part of their sacraments.  As monastic orders were highly efficient communities

with a centralized structure, the labor intensive and economically unprofitable nature of

viticulture during that period was unlikely to attract a secular following.  Charlemagne,

during the 9th century, supported both monastic vineyards and secular agriculture. 

Centering around Pfalz or “the Palatinate” as it was called, wine production along with a

well organized commodities trade flourished.

 

After 1000, Germany experienced a significant population expansion. Vineyards advanced

with the new lands being cleared for agriculture.  As forests were cleared, and farming

established, vineyards were also planted.  Monasteries such as that of the Benedictines at

Rheingau, which we know of as the Schloss Johannisberg Kloster, began terracing remote

hillsides, areas highly unsuited for successful viticulture.  The entire Rhine and Mosel Valleys

were in viticulture from Trier, near the Luxembourg border, to Switzerland.

 

 

In 1135, the Cistercians began making wines in Erbach.  A significant portion of Germany’s

wine production at this time were ecclesiastical properties, especially along the Mosel,

controlled by the powerful Bishop of Trier.  Along with their political power, these religious

orders did much to apply the science of viticulture to the economics of the region. Joining

the religious orders were the aristocracy.  From the 15th century onward, viticulture would

be a source of secular wealth for, not only the nobility, but for a new commercial class

beginning to develop during this era.

 

Germany’s river systems that afforded trade north to Amsterdam and beyond and south

through the Danube to the Black Sea provided a framework for a renewed trade in wines as a

period of stability, prior to the religious wars, fostered travel and communications. 

Frankfurt and Cologne became ports in the wine trade, moving wine both north, up the

Rhine to Holland and England and south to Switzerland or Central Europe.  Hamburg

supplied Scandinavia with wines and grew wealthy and powerful.

 

This continued growth in trade and wine production was an economic boon to Germany but

lack of systematic vineyard management or wine making standards left the growing wine

industry vulnerable to more marketable products.

The vast plantings of inferior varieties of grapes, often grown in climate and soil

inappropriate for production of quality wines, established this Germany’s wine growing

region as one of the world’s great volume producers for the undiscerning consumer. 

Produced for alcohol content alone, wines from the primitive grape varieties available at that

time,  neither aged well nor responded well to alterations in blend or fermentation

procedure.  Even with today’s technology and new hybrid versions of the old varieties, this

same axiom holds true now as it had over 500 years ago, though some producers toy with

the “historical” varieties for sake of research or curiosity.

 

By the 15th century, though there was four times the region in grapes that is currently under

cultivation.  This represented a considerable decline from the production levels of the

balmier times of the early centuries of the second millennium, known as the Medieval

Warming Period.  The “Little Ice Age” that was to follow, to some extent well into the 19th

century, would alter the climactic situation in Europe to near “biblical” extent.

 

The Little “Ice Age”

 

Global warming today may turn southern England back into the balmy wine producer it had

been 7 centuries ago.  There was a time in the 14th century when England’s growing season

was two months longer and its wine industry flooded the French markets instead of the other

way around.

 

In an analysis of the wine industry and its development, this period of climate change in

Western Europe is generally ignored for the far more colorful and well-publicized theories

involving the “Black Death” and how labor shortages created a “middle class”.   What we do

know is that from around 1000 to 1300, at a time when Europe was seeing the beginnings of

nation states while repeatedly invading the Holy Land in a near endless series of Crusades, a

period of climate change of unusual nature occurred.

 

Called the Medieval Warming Period, this time saw growing seasons in northern latitudes

and higher altitudes which allowed crops that had previously only been possible in more

balmy climes.  Farming moved up to the most northern reaches of Norway and eventually to

Iceland, Greenland and Nova Scotia.   However, by 1370 the colonies on Greenland had lost

communication with the outside and, when Hanseatic navigators visited the area in the 15th

century, no evidence of settlement was found beyond a single frozen corpse.  It is obvious that

some kind of radical change occurred.

 

During the Warming Period, grapes across the northern belt of Western Europe were

primarily reds with a thriving wine production in England flooding the French market to an

extent to have been considered the possible subject of a trade embargo.  The Domesday Survey

of the 11th century shows extensive vineyards across England from Somerset to East Anglia. 

There were even vineyards in Wales.  Both a monastic and royally supported viticulture, in

Britain, had rooted itself as a major cultural and economic factor, a factor doom to fade to

oblivion for centuries.

 

Additionally, during this period, Northern France was able to support a viticulture currently

only sustainable in Bordeaux or the Southern Rhone Valley.  Wine production for the

northern Frankish Kingdom  had supplanted imports from the Romanesque south.  France, at

that time was deeply divided with a Germanic north and Mediterranean south with continued

Latin traditions and direct ties to Rome.   By the 14th century, the religious fervor that had

brought Europe in conflict with Islam would turn upon itself in a frenzy of brutal destruction

under the guise of a Crusade.  The murderous “land grab” that was the vicious and deadly

crusade against the Cathars (a simplistic and pious Christian sect) would eventually create

the France we know today and, according to many historians, move the Renaissance back 200

years.

 

In Germany, vineyards not only supported varieties of grape that are unthinkable in today?s

warming climate but areas still impossible for any type of viticulture were supporting vast

wine production.  Grapes for wine require not only a frost-free spring but a warm autumn for

added sugar levels required for alcohol production and predictable late frosts that allow

successful harvesting.  Production reached tremendous levels with the incumbent economic

impact on ecclesiastical growers to incentify monastic viticulturists to further their pursuits

into the agriculture sciences.  With the onset of climatic change, their melding of economic

endeavor with scientific pursuit would allow the survival of Germany’s wine industry while

Britain’s would virtually disappear.

 

By the 15th century, a general cooling across Europe and, perhaps, worldwide was to alter not

only wine making, but all agriculture and every aspect of life.  For reasons now seen as

controversial, especially by our current “flat Earthers” and global warming denialists, Europe

was to see, first, a general cooling and later, by the 17th century, an equivocal freeze.  Initially,

lakes and rivers that had never frozen began to ice up and would, eventually stay frozen all

winter.  At one point, even the canals of Venice were said to have frozen over.  Violent storms

rocked Europe and crops failed and famine set in.  Glaciers advanced across Europe,

destroying towns and flooding  agricultural areas.  Exorcising demons to hold back the

glaciers became a cottage industry for the church.

 

It is even thought that the increased frequency of natural calamities may have brought about

the craze of witch-hunts that plagued Europe and brought about the deaths of tens of

thousands.  Under these increased pressures and atmosphere of watchfulness, thunder storms

and  particularly hail storms were seen as satanic in origin.  The required investigation,

inevitable conviction and tortuous death at the hands of a variety of authorities tended to lend

this era a particularly dark aspect.

 

In France, the Little Ice Age is thought to have brought about the invention of Champagne. 

During the 1500s, vineyards across France began to die out.  Where there had, at one time,

been many high altitude vineyards, the only ones left were in the Champaign region. 

However, with the extreme lowering of temperature, changes in fermentation began to create

an unpleasant bubbling effect in the wines.

 

In order to deal with this disastrous problem, Dom Perignon was called upon to find a

solution.  Dom Perignon was a 17th century Benedictine monk at the Abbey de Hautvillers, an

ancient order established in the 7th century.  As a two step cold fermentation process had

inadvertently set in due to cold temperatures, bringing about this nasty “fizz” making keg

storage impossible, a unique method of storing and aging wine was invented, the glass bottle. 

As bottle production was less than a science at this time, walking through a wine cellar

without protection could be a dicey experience with the constant din of shattering glass being

a regular occurrence.  However, as this unpleasant bubbling effect began to be controlled and

perfected, tastes at the Royal Court also changed and bubbles were “in” and “Champagne” was

born, a positive result of the Little Ice Age.

 

In Germany, with the severe drop in temperatures and the shortening of the growing season,

wine production was to fall to half the 1300 level.  On the coldest years, records show that

wine production was off by as much as 80 percent from previous recorded levels during the

Medieval Warming Period.  Red grapes, making up the majority of Germany’s wine output, 

were to disappear entirely from production as the shortened growing season, by two months

in some areas, necessitated the introduction of hardier strains that were able to produce

quality wine.  This became a further impetus to the spread of the Riesling, which moved into

prominence at the exact onset of the climactic change.

 

The Little Ice Age would peak during the 17th and 18th centuries with some years having no

growing season at all.  By the 1850s the series of climatic anomalies was  no longer to be a

factor.  Today’s wine industry in the United Kingdom, France and Germany is far from having

recovered from the devastations of the Little Ice Age.  We have only partially “recovered” to the

level of the Medieval Warming Period when cornfields were as much the norm in Greenland

as they are in Iowa.

 

The Rise of the Noble Riesling

 

 

The introduction of the Riesling, called by many, “the greatest wine grape” was destined to

permanently alter the dynamic of German viticulture.  The first Riesling plantings were found

in and around Rheingau and Mosel around 1450.  Prior to that, the traditional grape varieties

used, for Roman and early German wines were the Elbing, Silvaner, Muskat, Traminer,

Trollinger and Spatburgunder.  Early wines were seldom distinguished by grape variety with

vineyards often having a mix of several varieties sharing the same vineyard and probably the

same bottle.  The superiority of the Riesling grape and the delicacy of the wines produced by it

were to bring about a revolution in wine making.

 

Through a series of decrees from a variety of authorities, political and clerical, inferior grapes

were slowly eliminated and the mighty Riesling came into supremacy.  Authorities began to

recognize that continued production of low quality grapes and their inclusion in regional

wines would hold back economic development of the area.  Inferior grapes represented, not

only production of adulterated wine but also inferior economic development of valuable

agricultural land.

 

The origin of the Riesling is uncertain.  Early records show plantings at Ruesselsheim in 1435

and as early as 1232 in Wachau, Austria.  Along the Mosel, the first significant planting of

Riesling was near the city of Trier at the St. Jacob Hospice.

 

By the early 1708, Kloster Eberbach had produced the first “Kabinett” wines, establishing the

first quality benchmark for Riesling wine and later, in 1753, the Kloster also discovered “Noble

Rot,” a native fungus that, while attacking the grapes, simultaneously produced wines of an

incredible sweetness and complexity. 

Toward the end of the same century, the first “Spatlese” was produced at Schloss Johannisberg

because someone forgot a Riesling harvest that ended up producing an incredible wine out of

quite “unattractive” grapes.

 

While these advances demonstrated the wonderful diversity of the Riesling grape, moves were

made to assure its supremacy.  For instance, Cardinal Christoph von Hutten, then Bishop of

Speyer, in 1744, began insisting on the destruction of all Elbing vines and their replacement

with Riesling.  In 1787, the Elector of Trier, Clemens Wenzelaus, issued a decree that ordered

the removal of all “non noble” vines.

 

The mid 18th century also saw additional safeguards with monastic regulations ending

sugaring of wines and other forms of adulteration better left undiscussed.  In the Rheingau,

monastic authorities also reintroduced a red, the Orleans, thought by many to be a Pinot Noir

and still produced by some adherents to the historic grape varieties.

Religious War and German Wines

 

As the Middle Ages ended with the spread of the Renaissance and its resurgence of

both economic and scientific achievement, Germany’s wine producing areas faced

many challenges that helped create the regional identities that continue to define

them to this day.  A significant factor in this was the Thirty Years War.  This conflict

was fought in and around Germany’s best viticultural areas, laying entire

communities to waste.  With the end of the war in 1648 came a total collapse of

trade and the decimation of the local economy brought about a near end to the

existing system of wine production.  With the lack of consumers and capital, the

price of wine plummeted.  Additionally, these accelerated market pressures made

marginal quality products uneconomical to produce and transport.  As most of the

existing German wine production was of “marginal quality,” viticulture and the

Riesling grape were to become increasingly important.

 

In 1648, with the Treaty of Westphalia giving much of the Alsace to France, the

remaining German wine producing areas, or at least the best of them, would be

typified by their slate soils and late season ripening.  The softer climes of the Alsace

would, for the first time, become part of France with a viticultural area centering

around the city of Colmar.

 

For the German side, especially in the Mosel Valley, the natural development of

this regionalization was to create with what was at hand, building on both

traditions from the past and constant innovation, a near endless array of unique

wines.  Taking advantage of the area’s mineral rich soil, while learning to triumph

over the “challenging” climate of their extreme northern latitudes, German

producers put their focus more and more on the Riesling grape.  The Riesling with

its unique ability to find beauty and complexity where other grapes would wither

and die, served as a palette for wine makers that had to become artists or,

themselves, wither on the vine.

 

Through overcoming this adversity, the succeeding generations of German

viticulturists were to produce wines that would astound the world.  Patience,

science and “dumb luck” were to build a wine producing society whose culture was

to flower, as did the renown of its wines.  With this viticultural-based economy, the

region developed a lifestyle and culture sharing more of the ease of nature of the

warmer climates.  Wine producing became an art and enjoying wine became a

philosophy.

 

Wine and the Rise of German Beers

 

With the collapse of wine prices at the end of the Thirty Years War, fertile farming

lands that had been in wine production returned to traditional agriculture.  Areas

that previously produced abysmal wines were now rightfully returning to grain

production.  Though this was to have an overall positive effect on the quality of

wines and the elimination of inferior grape varieties, this resurgence of grain

production brought with it another market pressure on the already decimated

wine growers.

 

Grain makes beer.  The same passion and science and culture that was creating

what would be the great German wines was now giving birth to a new tradition

of great beers.  Continual market pressure from these fine beers would limit the

economic potential of wine in the region.  In fact, many of the best beer

consumers are and always have been wine producers.  The grapes from the steep

hillsides of the river valleys and the grain from the rolling meadows beyond

combine to create a tradition of cheer and fellowship that have drawn travelers

from around the world to the Rhine and Mosel for many generations.

 

Beer production in Germany is easily as old as viticulture.  The first evidence of

beer production was the discovery of an 8th century BC Amphora (jar) near the

town of Kulmbach.  The first evidence of commercial trade in beer was discovered

near Trier when a 2nd century BC tablet containing the details of a beer shipment

was unearthed.

 

It wasn’t until the 2nd millennium that monasteries became involved in beer

production, first for their own use and later, through Kloisterschenken, or

monastery taprooms, in the commercial distribution of beer.  The same scientific

expertise that monks put into wine production put German beer at the world’s

forefront.

 

By the 15th century, Kloister production of beer had reached a point that the tax

free status of monastic clergy was beginning to impact government revenues. 

Kaiser Sigismund was the first German leader to curtail the monastic “Beer

Barons” through a limiting decree.  By 1803, decrees would eliminate almost all

monastic breweries.

 

German beer exports, by the 16th century, especially to England and Holland,

reached significant proportions.  Cities like Bremen and Hamburg became world

famous for their breweries.   With beer becoming a major source of both export

and domestic taxation, protection of beer quality was seen as a point of both

national pride and economic necessity.

 

In 1516, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria enacted the Reinheitsgebot (Purity Law)

decreeing from that point onward very strict regulations on beer content. 

However, it is noted that no such decree or legislation protecting the viticultural

industry has been forthcoming.  In fact, Germany’s 1971 wine labeling legislation

set the stage for an orgy of adulteration and misrepresentation whose

consequences are still being felt.

 

German Wines Enter a Golden Age

 

All of Germany’s wine production came under French control after the French Revolution of

1789.  As the French Revolution was as much against the perceived excesses of the French

clergy as the monarchy and feudal system, the French Republic immediately eliminated

“tithing,” the church tax traditionally paid by all Germans.  With the elimination of tithing,

agriculture and wine production in particular were to become increasingly profitable and

Germany’s wine producing region was to see the beginnings of an economic rebirth.

 

Soon after taking power in France, Napoleon took these Republican reforms even further by

confiscating church vineyards along with those held by most German nobility.  These choice

wine producing estates were then auctioned to raise capital to fund Napoleon’s wars of

European conquest.  The result of these changes was to put production in the hands of the

newly empowered merchant class and to put real incentives behind the production of

quality wine for the first time.

 

In 1814, with the fall of Napoleon, the region returned to German Administration, though of

a Prussian variety not entirely in line with the more informal regional character of the Rhine

and Mosel valleys and their surrounds.  The Pfalz came under control of the Kingdom of

Bavaria.  King Maximilian Joseph ordered a survey for both taxation and mapping, taken

from 1814 until 1828.

 

This system assigned quality levels to vineyards and assigned values and related taxes based

on those quality levels.  We call systems like this “Burgundian” and they are becoming more

popular now with the resurgence of Riesling as an ultra-premium varietal.  A new system

called Grosses Gewachs creates a classification denoting stringent vineyard management

practices and hand harvesting.  A further vineyard classification system, like that of the

French, has designated “Grand Cru” vineyards.

 

A further classification system, loosely based on the 1828 classification gives a village name

to the more ordinary wines, with both vineyard and village names for the mid-quality and

vineyard name alone for the best quality.

 

This classification system is largely ad hoc as it has no official government sanction and is not

recognized by labeling authorities.  The Pfalz, to some the remaining German portion of the

Alsace, is seeking to revisit its golden age that succumbed to the malaise of the strife filled

twentieth century.  Quality requires more than rules and labels.  Truth be told, traditions in

German viticulture are today  increasingly being established rather than being renewed

from an earlier golden era.  Technology and commercialism have been minor factors in our

most recent period of unmarketable wine production.

 

Wine is a natural product, reflective of the region it is produced in.  Areas like the Pfalz, with

its terraced valleys and unique soils will always be dedicated to wine making.  But, soil and

climate alone do not necessarily dictate what products an area produces.  In Western

Europe, with its political climate and centuries of warfare, the politics of conflict has often

been the biggest factor.  After centuries of destruction, viticulture has always been the only

available source of trade during periods of rebuilding.

 

Today’s fine equipment and costly vineyard management practices are as much the result of

a powerful industrial economy as any dedicated group of individuals.  For reasons no one has

yet explained competition and marketability alone have never been adequate factors in

pushing quality viticulture to the fore front.  It is only when an economy affords the

individual with the ability to express pride in his product at the cost of efficiency and profit

will there be a genuine “Golden Age.”  It was never what the powerful did with their tracts of

the best lands and their traditional control of the fluctuating markets of German wines.

 

The big name vineyards, on the worst of years, have always had their soil and their perfect

southern exposures. They have always had their label names, their shippers, their importers,

and their adherents in a world where much of today’s wine production is controlled by

distilleries, soft drink companies, and agribusiness.  The German regions like the Pfalz exist

as a microcosm of the traditional struggles of the post industrial age.   Rousseau would have

you see the wine maker as a man living in harmony with the natural elements bending them

to his will.  Today’s winemaker, living in a wealthy industrialized state, is hardly a child of

Thoreau or Nietzsche.

 

Whether New Zealand, or Napa, or the Cape, or even Surrey, wine making is an idea more

than a trade.  For the individual wine maker the process ends when the label is placed on the

bottle, usually by hand.  Everything that makes the contents of the bottle a reflection of an

individual culminates in this action.  The feelings during this process, one of so many a

winemake has to include in his daily rituals, does more to define a golden age than a

container of Bordeaux’, or Napa Valley Cabernets. 

 

The great estates of Mosel, Rheingau, Rheinhessen and Pfalz were allowed to develop and

thrive, as a new class of merchants acting as commercial wine producers combined and

reorganized the previously fragmented estates into powerful economic concerns, under the

firm hand of Prussian guidance and taxation.

 

Germany still existed, at this time, as a hodgepodge of Duchies and minor principalities,

each with its own laws and trade regulations.  The Zolleverein, or General Customs Union

was formed to standardize trade practices and allow the growth of commercial enterprises. 

Under this new law, trade in wine increased dramatically, giving additional financial

incentive for quality wine production and increasing the value of prime vineyards.

 

The new “wine business” brought about, during the mid 19th century, growers unions which

included the commercial class producers and the remaining land holding nobility.  These

unions created a system of storage and distribution that controlled costs and led to increased

profitability.  Schools were established to teach scientific viticulture and the first generation

of winemakers/scientists began applying what they had learned.  New products, such as

Sekt, often made from quick ripening varieties, became popular as an alternative to French

Champaign.  This resourceful use of otherwise “inferior” varieties aptly demonstrated the

capabilities of the scientist/vintner.

 

The new  commercial powerhouses that developed during this stable period took full

advantage of economic potential of producing quality wines and amassed large holdings of

the best producing vineyards.  Wine growing areas were evaluated and graded, under this

new administration,  with Prussian efficiency.  The best lands were taxed accordingly but

were also harvested with equal care.  The resulting wines brought about a Golden Age of

German wines.

 

For the first time, wines from the Rhine and Mosel regions were to surpass the finest

Bordeaux in quality and, especially, in price.  For the first time, near the close of the 19th

century, German wines were to take a significant place in North American culture.  From

the wine list of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island to the private cellars of “Robber Barons”

of Newport, Rhode Island, America’s wealthy elite were to embrace quality Riesling and

make it a part of that era’s lifestyle based on new found wealth.

 

Commercialism Takes Its Toll

 

Driven by increased consumption and the motive for profit at the cost of quality, 20th century

growers began seeking “scientific” methods for producing profit instead of wine.  Advances in

technology allowed the development of a new group of varietal grapes based on the Silvaner. 

By the 1930s, nearly half of the vines being planted were varieties of these inferior hybrids.

 

After the devastation of WWII, increased economic pressures combined with mechanization

encouraged growers to nearly double the size of plantings.  However, the areas chosen were

based more on the needs of the machines than the need for quality wine.  In the Mosel region

in particular, plantings on the valley floor and sunny gentle slopes, often of quick ripening

grapes like the Muller Thurgau, produced vast yields of juice unsuitable for quality wines. 

Unsuitable though this juice was, it was used to produce inferior wines that were to cloud the

real nature of German wines for the next two generations.

 

Each region of Germany headed its own direction down the abyss.  In the Pfalz, the Sudliche

Weinstrasse or Southern Wine Street, flooded the markets with low quality bulk wines which

established German wines as “plonk” with a litre cost, something they are still trying to

recover from in the UK market.  Even the powerful estates of the Pfalz, run by traditional

merchant families for centuries, began producing “plonk” wines.  This period of decadence

during the mid 20th Century reflected similar quality declines in Rheingau and the Mosel.

 

Changes in wine law in 1971 allowed these inferior products to hide behind labels that made it

difficult for most consumers to differentiate between quality wine and wines produced on

“farms,” using chemical fertilizer and mechanical harvesters.  German wine drinkers fled this

“swill” for higher quality French wines leaving the export market the only dumping ground

for these inferior products, often labeled “Liebfraumilch” or “Piesporter Michelsburg” and, in

some cases carrying the estate designations of “mit Prädikat”.  To this day these “sickly” sweet

wines make up a significant market share of German wine imports to the United Kingdom

and North America and, too often, satisfy the need of the “less quality conscious” importer,

distributor and retailer to fill their obligatory “German wine slots” while helping to deny a

generation of consumers the joys of “real” German wine.

 

German Wines Enter the 20th Century

 

The aftermath of the “Great War” brought about a total collapse of the German economy and

the destruction of the existing system of trade and distribution.  The German wine industry,

having recovered from the phylloxera plague of 1881, was in spiraling downturn.  Germany’s

best wine areas were occupied by the French until June 1930 and outlandish trade laws

forbade the trade of German wines while flooding the German market with French imports

that were tax free.

 

By 1930, however, Germany began actively working to put its wine industry on a paying

basis.  Regulations were enacted abolishing the hybrids brought in from America as a hedge

against a new phylloxera outbreak and additional laws regulated wine quality.  These laws

created a classification of “natural” wines, without added sugar, a practice which had become

popular in the 19th century brought on by an excess of sugar due to the German control of

the international sugar market and a more painful excess of low sugar content must.

 

The Third Reich took a great interest in viticulture.  With the remilitarization of the

Rhineland in 1935 and the repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, the German government

began a project of development, called the “Weinstrasse”  for the viticultural and tourist

industries.  The goal was to develop a Tuscan atmosphere in the Rhineland based on

traditional architecture and picturesque wineries and vineyards.  Buildings were restored,

palms and other subtropical plantings were made and wine tourism was promoted.

 

By the 1980s, even some quality German producers began using inferior grape varieties in

their wine.  The German wine industry, responding to increasing labor costs entered a spiral

of decreasing quality and increasing production without marketability.  Even during this

period, however, the traditional growing areas still remained the best in the world and

dedicated wine makers still held to their traditions of excellence.

 

Names we all know well risked their economic competitiveness by retaining high standards

in the face of thoughtless commercialism that industry “experts” tried to indoctrinate them

with.  This core of traditionalists inspired a new generation of wine makers, often from their

own families or their own communities who, using modern science and community values,

began the comeback we see today.

 

Small growers throughout the Mosel, Rheingau and other regions, who recognize the

traditions of winemaking and the historical importance of the Riesling grape, have joined,

since this dark period, to not only restore the foundations of Germany’s great wines but to

create a new superlative level of quality working within largely traditional methods.

 

These growers, such as those of the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer valleys, who hand pick their

Riesling grapes from the precarious, near vertical vineyards are, again, producing the finest

wines in the world.  New generations of wine makers basing their lives on the traditions of

the past are working to restore Germany’s reputation as a producer of world-class products.

 

Resurgence in the production of traditional sweet Rieslings with great character and

complexity alongside new dry Rieslings, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gries and other slow ripening,

low production varietals is bringing to the wine lover the rare opportunity to once again

enjoy the fruits of nearly 2000 years of tradition and excellence.

 

Both challenged and inspired by the renewed respect for the Riesling demonstrated by New

World wine makers has refocused attention to the regions that made the Riesling great.  The

soils, climates and skills that made Germany’s Rieslings an art form are now, albeit slowly,

beginning to earn the admiration that had been there generations ago.