Germany Grapples with Wine Styles and Image
Dry Wines Gaining Popularity as Trend Goes Trocken
By Lisa Shara Hall
Contributing Editor
Not unlike other wine producing countries, German wine producers face challenges today, from labor shortages to changing tastes in wine consumption. Within Germany, one of the issues is trocken (dry) wines and the domestic preference for it.
The English-speaking world associates German wines with classic sweeter Rieslings. To many wine cognoscenti, particularly wine writers including Michael Broadbent, Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, German Rieslings—with their clean sugar-balanced fruit flavors framed by a steely acid backbone—are much loved and under-valued gems. But convincing the wine-buying public of that has been a problem.
Scandal did not help. In 1985, it was discovered that a small percentage of Austrian wines had been doctored with a harmless antifreeze-like additive (diethylene glycol) to heighten the sweetness perception and increase the wine’s body. More than half of all Austrian wine exports went to Germany and were blended with German wines to enrich them. Most damning of all, the Germans continued to label the Austro-German blends as 100-percent German. Though 1985 was not recent, the images of wrongdoing lurk still.
Promoting German wines has always been a tough sell. With poor quality wines in the 60s and 70s (of course, with exceptions), especially widely available hock and Liebfraumilch; the 1985 scandal, and hard-to-decipher labels, selling German wine has been a labor of love.
Even today, Germany still needs a public relations boost. In the U.K. at least, German producers have support. The German Wine Institute just initiated a project called Relaunch Wines—aimed at the U.K. market only—in an attempt to change the perception of German wines from sweet to dry, targeted at the mid-price segment. According to Carol Sullivan of the New York-based German Wine Institute, the promotion-focused wines are intended for mass distribution and sale and are not intended to replace the traditional, higher-priced wines. (Germany’s fruity wines are not a focus of this campaign, nor are the more handcrafted estate wines of all taste styles.)
The domestic German market has already made the leap from sweet to dry. It started with fine dining. When upscale, French-influenced restaurants first hit Germany in the 1980s, more sophisticated diners demanded German dry wine lists similar to fine restaurants in other European countries. Interest and demand grew, so by the early 1990s, the only wines on the lists of top restaurants were trocken, with a few fine Beerenauslese (BA) and Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) dessert wines.
Rheingau’s Trocken History
Dry wines have been produced in the Rheingau since the turn of the century. Weingut Georg Breuer is a leading producer of highly rated dry Rieslings. Owner Bernhard Breuer says that, “dry Riesling is not a new marketing tool, but has been our glorious tradition together with some rare years of botrytised wines. The fruity wine is really a new invention since technology made it possible to keep low alcohol with residual sugar stable.” Breuer has made Trocken wine since 1980, when Bernhard took over the family business in Rüdesheim (Rheingau) and changed it from a wine merchant house with some vineyards to a wine producing estate.
All of Breuer’s annual 40,000-case production is allocated. He adds, “I assume that we could sell more in the United States if we had the wines and my importer (Classical Wines in Seattle) could open other markets.”
But it is tough to open new U.S. markets for trocken Riesling. It is tough for any Riesling, in fact. German wine importer Ewald Moseler of Portland, Oreg., says he has had a hard time moving dry wines. The sweet wine image still holds strong in the United States, and it was not until recently that Moseler started bringing in dry Rieslings and saw results in sales.
The Warmer Pfalz
Moseler’s most successful trocken wines have been from one of the top Mosel producers, Weingut Dr. Loosen, from Loosen’s newest operation in the Pfalz, the J.L. Wolf estate.
Ernie Loosen claims, “It is very important to differentiate between the various regions in Germany. The more south in Germany, the more the wines are suitable for the dry style, because of the higher ripeness levels and therefore more alcohol. In the Mosel, the most northern growing area in Europe, ripeness levels are lower (or if high only because of a decent amount of botrytis) and acidity levels are higher.
Dr. Loosen is known for producing fine spicy wines from the Ürziger Würzgarten vineyard along the Mosel River.
“That was one of the reasons to start with J.L. Wolf in the Pfalz, to produce international-standard dry Rieslings (like Alsace, Wachau, or the new dry Australian Rieslings), and continue the traditional fruity style in the Mosel. Therefore we established a Cru System in the Pfalz, which is similar to the Burgundian vineyard classification, based on an old vineyard classification map from 1828.”
Dr. Bürklin-Wolf is another top-rated Pfalz estate producing dry Rieslings. In 1994, this estate also began classifying its vineyards in a Grand Cru system.
What about Fruity Wines?
Loosen thinks that German geography defines styles. “The big majority of the wines in the Pfalz, Baden, Frankonia, Würtemberg, Rheingau are dry and as you go north to Rheinhessen, Nahe, Mittelrhein and Mosel you will find the traditional fruity style of Riesling.”
A northerly winegrowing country, Germany’s vineyards are planted to at least 80% white varietals, almost opposite to the white versus red ratios common in most countries.
Annegret Reh-Gartner of the Mosel estate Von Kesselstatt agrees that the Mosel must be viewed differently from the rest of Germany. “You must make a big difference between the trends on the Mosel, which is still very classic, in particular for exports, and the trend in Rheinpfalz, Rheingau or Rheinhessen.
“The whole subject of trocken versus fruity wines is very contradicting. We do not like our sweet image, but I love the wines we produce on the Mosel with residual sugar and a perfect balance. However the image of being sweet has always hurt us and has to be changed. For the Mosel, I hope we can maintain our classical style. But for the other regions the trend goes trocken, with more success on the export markets than for the Mosel.”
Reh-Gartner says the Von Kesselstatt estate “produces 35 percent trocken wines, 17 percent medium dry, 44 percent sweet and 4 percent sparkling. Two years ago it was 30 percent trocken, 22 percent medium dry, so trocken is still growing and medium dry has lost. The so-called sweet wines are stagnating. Considering that we exported 33 percent last year and that those are mainly sweet wines, there are not many sweet wines consumed in Germany.
“This year I expect the medium dry wines to grow in consumption, in particular in Germany, as we do not name them anymore halbtrocken but ‘feinherb.’ Avoiding the word ‘halb’ (half), we have the impression that the consumer likes the medium dry taste when it comes to Mosel Riesling, but hates the term halbtrocken. A lot of buys are made for labels and not for taste—here is the crux we say in German.”
Other producers along the Mosel are also grappling with the trocken issue.
Ten years ago, the esteemed J.J. Prüm used to produce 50 percent of their wines trocken or halbtrocken; now, Dr. Manfred Prüm claims that “only 10 percent of my production is trocken and that’s for Germany.” Sixty percent of the J.J. Prüm wines are exported.
Weingut Selbach-Oster produces trocken wines, too, but little gets exported. According to Johannes Selbach, “Approximately 30 percent of our wines are trocken but only very little gets exported though it is always on our lists. It seems customers abroad greatly prefer the traditional style, given the choice.”
The Future
Loosen sums up one perspective. “I think in the future the consumer will learn again, that there are different traditional styles of taste in the German wine regions and that the style of wines we produce now (like Pfalz-dry, Mosel-fruity) will be accepted and established.”
Selbach believes “there is some potential, in a niche market, for crisp, unoaked dry wines that are food-friendly. At the same time I believe that fruity wines with good acidity and restrained sweetness, at least concerning the Mosel, have greater appeal and are very versatile with food—more versatile than bone dry wines.”
He continues, “One remark I always hear when I am trying to sell German dry wines is why buy the umpteenth dry wine from me, the German, when there are a zillion good dry wines available from around the world but there are so few off-dry wines that are balanced and mouth-wateringly good. It’s hard to object to that.”
But Breuer asserts, “There has been a very recent change that a new generation also sees. It is that we must occupy a more important position with dry wines in international markets, since with fruity and dessert wines only, we degenerate to an aperitif or dessert wine producing country and are excluded from the mainstream—which is, for example, also the inclusion in the main course of a meal. We have to position ourselves as the alternative to Chardonnay if we want to be taken seriously, as we used to be more than 50 years ago.”
Does that mean there is a danger of losing the Mosel strength in traditional, fruity wines? When this current generation of the Mosel’s top producers retires, will there be continued enthusiasm for producing the Mosel’s beautifully balanced fruity wines that age so magnificently? Will there be demand? In a global wine world, it is hard to tell.
Lisa Shara Hall writes about wine, with an emphasis on the Pacific Northwest, for numerous publications, including The Hugh Johnson Pocket Wine Guide, Oxford Companion to Wine and The Oregonian. Based in Portland, she is a candidate for the Master of Wine degree.
