Riesling Series Part II: Germany
When fully ripe, the thin skinned pale yellow Riesling berries start to turn golden yellow, exhibiting tiny brown specks on them indicating that their time of harvest is coming soon.
In Riesling Series Part I, we had discussed how grapes turn into wine and what factors affect the wine’s sweetness. We defined sweet wines versus dry and talked about the concept of ripeness. In this piece, we are going to talk about everything Germany - we’ll go over the history of Riesling and talk briefly about terroir before taking on the challenge of learning how to read a German wine label. I highly recommend re-reading part I as we will be revisiting the concept of sweetness and ripeness quite a lot.
First, a word on German wines. All throughout this post, have the words ‘purity’ and ‘precision’ in the forefront of your head. Think about German Rieslings (for the most part) like a well-engineered German car. They are racy yet elegant, curious yet precise, complex yet pure. Every sip is full of wonders and pleasant surprises.
History & geography:
While the first mention of Riesling on record was in 1435, it took another couple centuries for it to become a popular wine. Until the 1700’s, Riesling wasn’t widely planted in Germany and other indigenous varietals were preferred. And funny enough, it wasn’t under German rule when Riesling started climbing to fame. The French took over Alsace in 1648 after a thirty year war and found that most of the vineyards were destroyed. When the time came to replant the vineyards, the French decided to use Riesling. A few years after this, one vineyard in the Rheingau winemaking region in the name of Schloss Johannisberg (Schloss is the same thing as Chateau in French) followed Alsace in replanting its plot with Riesling. The winemaking region of Mosel quickly followed this act and by the end of 1700’s, most German vineyards had replanted their land with Riesling, now deemed a high-quality grape.
Schloss Johannisberg was also the accidental pioneer of late harvest wines, which are semi-sweet/sweet wines. The story goes, in 1775, the permission to carry harvested grapes to the premises of Schloss Johannisberg was delayed and by the time it was granted, the grapes hung on the vine for a couple weeks longer than they should have. Johannisberg winemakers wanted to salvage the crop and made wine out of it anyway, resulting with a sweet wine. That’s how Spätlase (late harvest) was born! We will discuss different sweetness levels of German wines later here, so stay with me. Fast forwarding to 1845: The English Queen was visiting a village named Hochheim in Germany’s Rheingau region and upon tasting their Riesling wines, absolutely fell in love with them. If you’ve ever heard a Brit refer to white wines, most specifically Rieslings as ‘hock’, now you know the reason why. Mid 1800’s onwards, German Rieslings started being highly reputable wines but the fame did not last long. During World War I and II, vast majority of German vineyards were torn to the ground. With German reputation taking a huge hit post 1945, German vineyards started focusing on mass production rather than quality to stay alive. From this point on, a well-made Riesling in Germany was few and far in between until 1980’s.
There are 13 defined winemaking regions in Germany, 5 of which are famous for producing some of the best Rieslings on earth. These are Mosel, Rheingau, Pfalz, Rheinhessen and Nahe. As mentioned before, Riesling is made in the vineyard and not the winery. Your crop is crucial to the kind of wine that you’re going to produce, so terroir is extremely important. With a late-ripener like Riesling, latitude and aspect are also extremely important. Latitude is how north or south on Earth the vineyard is located and aspect is the placement of the vines in relation to the sun. Wine grapes grow best in 30-50-degree latitude in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Germany has one of the world’s most northern-situated vineyards, well into the 50 degrees latitude. This means, the sun is already hitting the surface at a lower angle than it would be closer to the equator, so the placement of vines in relation to the sun is really important. A late ripening grape grown this north will need to maximize the sunlight. That’s why in places like Mosel, you will rarely see vines planted facing north; almost all the vineyards plant their crops on the southern facing slopes. As a late ripener, Riesling berries really start becoming aromatic into autumn. When fully ripe, the thin skinned pale yellow berries start to turn golden yellow, exhibiting tiny brown specks on them indicating that their time to harvest is coming soon.
There is one more vineyard-based concept dear to Riesling that you’ll need to know, especially in order to understand sweeter Rieslings and also some other sweet wines. During the growing season in a vineyard, if the weather is warm enough and the grapes are already moist, a special kind of bacteria can form and cover the grapes. Over a short period of time, if these bacteria are left to their own devices, they will start to dehydrate the grapes until the grapes shrink and become raisin-like. This bacteria is called Botrytis cinerea (more commonly known as ‘noble rot’) and it is responsible for how the sweetest Rieslings are made. When the grape dehydrates to the point that when you squeeze it, no juice comes out, it means the grape is really concentrated with sugar. We already know from part I that during fermentation, yeast can only turn so much sugar into alcohol; so the unmetabolised portion will remain in the wine as residual sugar, contributing to its perceived sweetness. Sauternes, Bordeaux’s famous sweet white wine, is also made this way.
German classification system and the ripeness scale:
The German Riesling classification system can get tricky, especially when those big German names are thrown around. I’ll try to simplify this as much as possible.
Contrary to other countries in the world, Germany produces very small amounts of ‘table wine’; it exists, but no one really pays attention to it. The classification system begins with Qualitätswein, or “Quality Wine” (see? It’s not that hard!). Qualitätswein has to come from one of the 13 designated wine growing areas and can be dry-to medium sweet. Trocken (dry), halb-trocken (half-dry), feinherb (semi-sweet), liebliche (Sweet-ish) and süss (very sweet); are the words used to describe the levels of sweetness. Chaptalization (adding sugar before fermentation to increase potential alcohol) is allowed.
The next level up in the classification system is Prädikatswein. This is quality wine with ‘prädikat’, or some special attributes. Prädikat wines come in different sweetness levels which is determined by the level of ripeness, as we have discussed in part I of this series. Prädikatswein ripeness scale from least ripe to most, is as follows: Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Eiswein and Trockenbeerenauslese.
If you recall from part I, ripeness of a grape at harvest (measured in units of Oechsle in Germany) determines the potential alcohol and residual sugar there will be in the final product.
- Kabinett wines are the lightest, driest Rieslings that are picked when the sugar density in the grape is 67-82 Oechsle.
- Spätlase (literally means ‘late picked’) wines are harvested a little later, when the sugar density reaches 76-90 Oechsle. Some Spätlase wines can be dry (Trocken), if the winemaker choses to convert more of the sugar into a higher alcohol wine (meaning less residual sugar). This will be indicated on the bottle.
- Auslese (literally means ‘out-picked’): As the translation suggests, these wines are made from clusters of grapes that were picked out during harvest, as opposed to harvesting every grape bunch together, all at once. Some of these clusters may be affected from Noble Rot, and are picked at 83-110 Oechsle. Auslese Rieslings can still be Trocken; but these wines will be both sweeter and higher in alcohol than a dry Spätlase.
- Beerenauslese: Literally means ‘berries that are picked out’ (gosh, I love German!); we are now solidly in the sweet wine territory. As the name suggests, the winemaker is having not just clusters of grapes but individual berries hand-harvested. Most of these grapes have been attacked by Nobel Rot and the sugar density is 110-128 Oechsle.
- Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA): Another finer example of the German language; this word tells you all you need to know about the wine you’re about to enjoy; made from ‘dried berries that are picked out’. We are now in full hand-harvesting territory, where the grapes being picked out have completely succumbed to Noble Rot and have been fully dried out, with sugar density around 150 Oecshle. TBA’s are some of the world’s most exquisite and expensive sweet wines and are sold in half bottle format.
- Eiswein: Back to simple German words, this means ice wine! Eiswein is a sweet wine that’s made in a completely different way than what we’ve discussed thus far. The grapes that are chosen as Eiswein candidates are left hanging on the vine well into late Fall and should not come in contact with Noble Rot. When the temperatures start dropping below 20 degrees Fahrenheit is when the grapes will start to freeze on the vine and then are harvested (110-128 Oechsle) and pressed while still frozen. A frozen wine grape will be more concentrated in sugar as the entire water content is now ice, so when pressed under frozen conditions, you extract a lot more sugar out of the berry. Ice wine production is extremely finicky given that the freezing temperatures may not come or the grapes may succumb to noble rot. That’s why ice wine is produced in very small quantities in a handful of places around the world.
And last but not least, there is one more layer of the German classification system that we have to touch on before we wrap up Germany. In 1920, about 200 vineyards in Germany got together and decided to form association of the best of the best Prädikat wines, called “Verband Deutscher Prädikats- und Qualitätsweingüter”. Let’s shorten that to VDP so you’ll never have to try to pronounce that in your head again..! In order to be a VDP member, the vineyard has to adhere to more stringent winamaking guidelines than just Prädikatswein. You’ll know if you’re drinking a VDP wine easily because the bottle will have the logo of an eagle either on the cap or the label. With VDP wines, there’s an additional layer of classification beyond the ripeness scale that is site-specific. This is somewhat similar to the Burgundian way of classifying terroir. Gutswein is village-level wine. Ortswein is wine from a single, quality vineyard and has the vineyard’s name on it. Erste lage (first site) is high quality single vineyard wine with the vineyards name and logo on the label as well as the number ‘1’ next to it (kind of like “premier cru” for Burgundy). Last but not least, Grosse lage (great site) and Grosses gewächs (great growth). These are wines from the best parcels of land in the best vineyards in Germany. Grosse lage and grosses gewächs (GG) is equal level of classification, with the main difference being that GG wines will be dry.
A word of caution on VDP. While it is most likely the case that a VDP wine will be excellent, that doesn’t mean that a non-VDP wine cannot be just as good. Like with any other wine quality association, this is highly political. There are plenty of fantastic wines out there (mostly from newer vineyards) which don’t have VDP designation; don’t rule them out because you think they are inferior.
We have covered a lot in this post so if you’ve made it this far, I wholeheartedly thank you for reading and hope that I was able to break down some tough concepts of German winemaking. There are many things that we didn’t get a chance to cover; like what kind of Riesling each region tends to specialize in, but we’ll will save that for another post in the future. Next up on the Riesling series, we are going to learn about Riesling’s presence in the rest of the world. Stay tuned!
This is an excellent visualization of the German wine classification system, courtesy of winefolly.com
