The northerly winemaking regions of Germany straddle the 50th parallel and are amongst the world’s coolest vineyards.
Nonetheless, vine cultivation dates to the ancient world—wild vines had been growing on the upper Rhine previously, but Vitis vinifera arrived in Germany with the Romans. Near the end of the 3rd century, Emperor Probus overturned Domitian’s 92 CE ban on new vineyard plantings, and viticulture followed the Romans into provinces north of the Alps. By the fourth century winemaking was definitively established along the steep slopes of the Mosel River. Charlemagne, the legendary beard-stained lover of wine—whose newly minted Carolingian calendar replaced the Roman October with Windume-Manoth, “the month of the vintage”—introduced vine cultivation east of the Rhine River in the late eighth century. During the Middle Ages, the Church was instrumental in shepherding the development of vineyards, and many of Germany’s modern einzellagen (vineyards) owe their nomenclature to monastic influence. As in France, the Church essentially operated its own feudal economy: it collected a tithe, or tax, from the parishioners who worked the vineyards, and wine made a suitable substitute for cash. The Cistercians of Burgundy founded the famous Kloster Eberbach monastery in the Rheingau in 1136, where they amassed the largest vineyard holdings in Europe by the end of the Middle Ages, with over 700 acres of vines. The walled Steinberg vineyard, an ortsteil within the commune of Hattenheim, was the monks’ centerpiece and remains wholly intact today—an alleinbesitz (monopole) of Kloster Eberbach for over eight centuries
Hello! I'm wondering if anyone can help me by expanding on this point: "Grosse Lage wines are the product of grapes harvested by hand at a maximum yield of 50 hl/ha, and at a minimum must weight equivalent to Spätlese. If dry, the wines are denoted by the initials “GG” (Grosses Gewächs), whereas lusciously sweet wines are labeled by traditional prädikat levels."
From readings I've done here and elsewhere, I am seeing that if a VDP wine is sweet, it will be labeled with a prädikat level to denote the sweetness. But does anyone have information about how many grams of RS are allowed at each prädikat level (for VDP wines — I do not mean in the traditional system)?
Also, if the minimum must weight of a Grosse Lage wine must be equivalent to a Spätlese, does that mean that a sweet Grosse Lage Kabinett could not exist? The Wine Bible indicates that a wine labeled as Kabinett on a VDP label would be sweet, but if the ripeness of the grapes must be Spätlese or higher, how could there be a sweet Kabinett wine?
The way I've been thinking about it, I've assumed a Grosse Lage could be made from grapes picked at any ripeness level and then fermented dry, but a Gross Lage labeled with a prädikat level would be made from grapes picked at that prädikat ripeness level, but then fermentation would be halted to leave RS in the wine. Or is it that the prädikat level listed on VDP labels truly has NO connection to the ripeness level of the grapes and ONLY corresponds to the RS level in the finished wine? And if so, as I asked above, what are the grams of sugar allowable at each prädikat level as they relate to the VDP system?
Thank you!
Cait Callahan That's actually a mistake. As I understand it, the Spätlese equivalent is only required if you're making a GG wine, otherwise all prädikat levels are allowed to be produced as Grosse Lage.
As for RS levels, there is not an RS required for each prädikat level, only a minimum ripeness at harvest (which follow the requirements of each individual angbaugebite). It's one of the maddening things about Germany :D Instead, you'll need to take the oechsle required at harvest (which you can look up in the compendium) and then use an online calculator to convert the Oe into dissolved sugar. You then look at the g/l of dissolved sugar and subtract out 17 g/l per each 1% of alcohol in the wine.
For example, let's say we have a typical Mosel Kabinett. In the compendium the Oe is required to be 73-80 degrees, which when using the calculator we see is about 190-209 g/l of sugar. So with a typical ABV of 8%, that Mosel Kabinett used about 136 g/l of sugar, leaving us with around 54-73 g/l of RS (but some producers like to ferment drier, so even at around 11% you start to run the risk of fermenting out all of the available sugar) However, because producers are allowed to declassify their production into lower prädikat levels, we don't actually know if that Riesling has that much RS. So basically, you can have a Spätlese bottled as a Kabinett (and that Kabinett with 11% ABV and lots of RS is probably a declassified Spatlese).
In summary, from the prädikat level, you cannot assume RS level. If there is a prädikat on a Grosse Lage wine, you can, however, assume that it has RS. If it is a GG, it was harvested at a minimum of Spätlese ripeness and was fermented to dryness.
Thanks Martin and Jennifer! That helps a lot, and is about as clear as German wine law can be. I really appreciate the quick replies!