What do you want to know about German wine?

I've been in Germany 30 years David..so any help with the language..

as to the rest..it's all yours

funnily enough.. I was gonna post a topic..saying..drinkers should be finding the labels easier nowadays..guess not

Barry

[James Roscoe]

Lots of good info above.

Everything would be reasonably easy to explain until we got to the Grosses Gewachs/Erste Lage/etc. changes. Now a wine from the Piesporter Goldtropfchen (the Goldtropfchen vineyard in Piesport) can possibly be labeled as just "Goldtropfchen". Of course if it is the wine is dry (at least according to the German definition of dry) & comes in a really fancy bottle.

Just remember the German motto: there's nothing so confusing that we can't make it more confusing.

And I thought the IRS forms were difficult....

funnily enough.. I was gonna post a topic..saying..drinkers should be finding the labels easier nowadays..guess not

Barry

I'm with you. To my mind, German wine labels are some of the most crystal clear labels on the planet ... provided you understand a little about the legal categorization of the wines which is not arcane at all. They do tell you what, where, when, and sometimes a little more. But, like with anything else, experience helps you to interpret the what's, where's, when's, and little more's as they relate to your personal taste.

[David M. Bueker]

I personally have always found the labels easy once I learned the basics. The yare daunting though if you don't spend some time reading the rules & that darned scripts on some of the older style labels (e.g. Grunhaus, Catoir, old Donnhoff) can be mighty confusing.

I probably shouldn't divulge this, but I thought my first Muller-Catoir (a 1990) was a mightly good Riesling until I looked really closely at the label & parsed out that there were too many letters for it to be Riesling. It turns out I had enjoyed a Rieslaner.

LOL, David about the shooting oneself in the foot.

I was looking for a link to a photo of the sun dial at Wehlener Sonnenuhr and didn't quite find that but look at these lovely photos:

http://www.vinnicombe.de/html/vintage_2006.html
(credit to Derek Vinnicombe who holds the copyright)

David Bueker is himself a wonderful photographer and may have a photo of the sun dial to post ?

The photos bring back lots of memories. For several years while living in Germany I spent a weekend in Traben-Trarbach every year and did a Volksmarch at Enkirch on the Mosel, often up the steep hillsides where the grapes are grown. The village of Enkirch put on a festival that weekend and had wine coming from the city fountain, oompah bands, etc.

That's a nice website, JC. Thanks for the link.