For decades, America was indeed the promised land: A vast nation of eager consumers with a low bar for entry. German winemakers were among the throng of sellers vying to win a sliver of Americans’ massive spending power. But times — along with politics and tariffs — have changed. Now, German winemakers are finding that their most loyal and free-spending audience may actually be up north. How Did We Get Here? The public’s perception of German wine is capricious; more so, arguably, than that of any other wine-producing nation. After rising to prominence over the 19th century, German wine suffered…
Kathleen Willcox has been writing about the business and culture of wine and food for more years than she’d care to reveal. Her work appears regularly in Wine Enthusiast, Wine Searcher, SevenFifty Daily, The Vintner Project, and many other publications. She co-authored the book "Hudson Valley Wine: A History of Taste & Terroir" (2017).
The sun blazes. The air shimmers. On the horizon four figures throw long shadows across the dry, crumbling ground. They are headed toward a city. Doors swing open. The four step from light into dark, their throats dusty and dry. Behind a deserted bar stands a man. He pushes four full glasses over to them. Out of the glasses sloshes a wine as red as the setting sun. If you aren’t thirsty by now, you should at least be hearing the melody of a harmonica. This is how the opening scene of a revival—the Rotling revival—could begin. The four men…...
Silvaner. It’s complicated. Ask about its nature or character, and like as not you’ll get one answer: asparagus. With delicate vegetal aromas and moderate acidity, Silvaner is indeed a near perfect pairing for the fabled stalk that emerges from the earth to fill German grocery stores and market stalls annually between April and June. Yet, stop for a minute and imagine: what if there were more? Silvaner is viewed as a national counterpoint to Burgundian Chardonnay or Saumur Chenin Blanc. For many years Silvaner was Germany’s most important grape variety, less inclined toward fruity fun and more toward structure, texture, spice, and earth. De facto it…...
If there is an underdog in Germany’s largest winegrowing region, Rheinhessen, it is Scheurebe. Vinified sweet for many years, Scheurebe — pronounced SHOY-ray-beh — largely fell out of fashion. But things changed, and with the dry wine revolution in Germany over the last 20 years, Scheu is back, with — to quote Patti LaBelle — brand new ideas and a new attitude. “Scheu,” as aficionados like to call it, was bred by German viticulturist Justus Georg Scheu in 1916. Unhappy with the many highly acidic and sour Rieslings he encountered, Scheu (the man, not the grape) wanted to create a…...
“Where are all the dynamic, characterful wines from Germany?” Bastian Fischer asked in exasperation after 16 years in the UK wine trade. This year he answered that question himself by opening his own shop. Trinkfluss Wines, just outside London, focuses “on some of the most electric, food-friendly, and downright delicious wines anywhere,” in Fischer’s view. His new venture, baptized with the German word for drinkability, quenches the thirst for Germany’s full gamut of varieties. But one swallow doesn’t make a summer. The somms and wine aficionados who shop at specialist wine stores like Fischer’s may have embraced German wines, but…...
Jonas Dostert is relaxing in the inner courtyard of his family’s Southern Mosel estate in Nittel. The sun is shining, the grapes were harvested in late October. Dostert is one of the growers of note at the southern end of the Mosel, a stretch long known as Obermosel. It’s a name many young growers in particular have rejected, as part of an effort to separate themselves from the region’s poor image in the past. “Obermosel” conjures images of accommodating, appeasing wines, the very definition of compromise. Dostert has quite a different understanding of winegrowing: “What I do is different from what’s…...
