I think this is a huge part of it. Also I think they want to be put on the same level (in terms of presige and money) as white burgundies and they feel this can only happen if the wines are dry. There is a general feeling (even among wine geeks) that serious wine can only be dry unless it is a dessert wine.
That’s my sense. Plus, younger Germans embrace foreign foods and wines and I would guess that sweet riesling might seem like a slightly stodgy, old fashioned German thing.
Dry or off dry they both work for me.
What other non German style foods work well with Trockens?
This bothers me. Not as much as you, but it just tickles my curiosity why, as I read about it, that the Germans- generally speaking- like the trockens and GG more. I have a lot of satisfaction in the fact that many of the producers that I buy for feinherb, trocken bis feinherb, Spätlese, and so forth, love these styles and excel in making these styles, and are compelled to make these styles for all of the right reasons. Hopefully they will keep making them…
+1 I think that German off-dry riesling is the most versatile wine in the world (for my palate).
John and Berry make good points here. I would add to that the idea that somehow as Bill points out in the original post that the sweet wines are somehow a manipulation putting them further away from terroir and vineyard expression. There is a lot of that appealing to the so called ‘authentic’ going around these days.
Line up the four main sweet spatlesen from Donnhoff: Hermannshohle, Kirschheck, Brucke and Felsenturmchen. Taste them all side by side. If you can’t identify the fact that they come from different sites then give up wine drinking. The terroir is there and very strong in the sweet wines, just as well as in the dry wines.
This trocken religion is just that - religion. It’s based on myth and opinion, not fact. Are there great dry wines? Yes! Are there great off-dry wines? Yes! Are there great sweet wines? Yes!
It seems that everyone here can agree on that!
I think they’re very versatile, particularly when you consider the range of styles/structures, from steely and acidic to lush, full-bodied GGs.
Great essay, Bill. Let a thousand Rieslings bloom.
Re Alsace: much of the difference probably stems from the fact that between 1871 and 1918, when Alsace was part of Germany, only inferior grape types could be planted and no sweet wines could be made. After both World Wars, the Alsatians faced very questions on how to shape the image of their wines and probably decided consciously or unconsciously to go for dry and avoid the sweet wines.
Hi Chris,
I’m quite sure that I didn’t mention natural wines in this post. I mentioned organic and biodynamic vineyard practices to illustrate how far vineyard management techniques have progressed in a country where the climate is rather inhospitable to anyone not practicing conventional agriculture. It is absolutely more difficult to bring in clean, botrytis-free fruit than it is to bring in rotten berries and mask them with residual sugar in Germany. My point is merely that you can’t hide deficiencies behind sugar with dry wines. If you tasted a white burgundy with significant botrytis, you would know. Some people can pick out botrytis from sweet Riesling, others (most people) can’t. Furthermore, I stated:
“To make the claim that every producer who made or makes sweet or off-dry Riesling in Germany is doing so with low-quality produce is absolutely false”
I drink and love many conventionally produced wines. But when I drink an amazing organic wine from here, knowing how incredibly difficult they are to produce because I’m working in the vineyard for ten hours every day, I am impressed –yes, especially when it is dry.
If you are looking for prominent producers from the early to middle twentieth century, I think that you probably know a lot of them already. Off the top of my head:
Basserman-Jordan, Bürklin-Wolf, Von Buhl, Schloß Johannisberg, Kloster Eberbach (State Domaine Hessen), Schloß Vollrads, Domdechant Werner, Langwerth von Simmern, Schloß Schönborn, Bürgerspital, Juliusspital, Vereingte Hospitien, Thanisch, Karthäuserhof, Grünhaus, von Kesselstatt, J.J. Prüm, Egon Müller…
Finally, here is one list of older Riesling that I found (some dry, some sweet.)
http://www.georg-breuer.com/deutsch/weine/bilder/raritaeten.pdf
Basserman-Jordan also has a cellar with wines going back to 1811. They are opening a couple of them soon for a tasting, but the entrance price is a little out of my range. Have a lot of dry white wines survived from anywhere? I’m not sure that I’ve seen many 19th century white burgundies at tastings for sale but I’m reasonably sure that they were produced.
I am actually kind of surprised about all of this inquiry. Let me ask anyone out there: If you wanted to produce an off-dry or sweet Riesling using only a wooden-press, a 1200 liter wooden vat, without sterile filtration and temperature control how would you do it?
John,
Yes, the Mosel is generally seen as wine that grandma drank. There was an article in Slow Food Germany a couple of months ago that was titled something very close to that in fact. I have to give the article credit –they profiled some very good producers (yes! some of my favorites if only I could find them.)
Finally, this was not a rant or manifesto against off-dry or sweet Riesling. What the hell?
Didn’t anyone read where I mentioned Willi Schaefer and Egon Müller? I am simply trying to give some reasons for WHY dry Riesling is popular in Germany.
Claude, Thank you
Cheers,
Bill
Come on Bill…dry Riesling became popular relatively recently. It had nothing to do with history, but rather with perception of dry wines as inherently better.
Bill: Great post indeed. I’d like to add that the Mosel until the early 20th century was, unlike the Rheingau, less known for producing wines affected by botrytis. Most growers sought to harvest before noble rot set in.
David M.: The dogma, of course, isn’t limited to “Trockenheit,” if I may quote David Schildknecht. I don’t really know why you feel that Bill is preaching dry German Riesling either. You might want to reread his post.
Claude: On another recent trip to the Nahe, Helmut Dönnhoff, I believe, said that after the Second World War the grape growers were forced by the French to cut down their vines.
David, German Riesling was among the most popular white wine in Britain in the late 19th century. Are you saying that everyone was drinking TBA? Also given the fact that most of the wines were shipped in barrel and not even bottled, a practice that continued well into the 20th century, there is NO way that the vast majority of wines were anything but dry.
You should read some of the books on German wine published in the early to mid 20th century:
Bassermann-Jordan Die Geschichte des Weinbaus, Frankfurt 1923
Hallgarten, Rheinland Wineland, London 1967
Langenbach, The wines of Germany, London 1951
Schoonmaker, The wines of Germany, New York 1956
That should get you started.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill,
I’ve read Schoonmaker.
I’m still trying to get some idea of what great dry wines were around. As mentioned elsewhere, I’ve had more than a handful of very old (early 20th century) Rieslings, but all were (originally very) sweet.
General table wines don’t mean much, just as the generic swill of today doesn’t mean much in this debate.
I’m not talking about generic swill. Barrels were bought and sold and shipped from different wine ports in Germany (Trier, Bingen, Worms, Speyer) much like people still buy barrels of Burgundy at auction. They were usually bottled at the port of destination. I’m sure that some of them received the dreaded 85 point score from Jebediah Parker, but don’t you think that there were a couple of 95s in there as well? ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Cheers,
Bill
But you are also inferring that sweet wines can be about masking botrytis. That is a very circumspect position which conveniently props up dry wine making as the clean hero.
If you are looking for prominent producers from the early to middle twentieth century, I think that you probably know a lot of them already. Off the top of my head:
Basserman-Jordan, Bürklin-Wolf, Von Buhl, Schloß Johannisberg, Kloster Eberbach (State Domaine Hessen), Schloß Vollrads, Domdechant Werner, Langwerth von Simmern, Schloß Schönborn, Bürgerspital, Juliusspital, Vereingte Hospitien, Thanisch, Karthäuserhof, Grünhaus, von Kesselstatt, J.J. Prüm, Egon Müller…
Finally, here is one list of older Riesling that I found (some dry, some sweet.)http://www.georg-breuer.com/deutsch/weine/bilder/raritaeten.pdf
Basserman-Jordan also has a cellar with wines going back to 1811. They are opening a couple of them soon for a tasting, but the entrance price is a little out of my range. Have a lot of dry white wines survived from anywhere? I’m not sure that I’ve seen many 19th century white burgundies at tastings for sale but I’m reasonably sure that they were produced.
I wasn’t asking about the 19th century and this tactic of trying to create a straw man opinion out of my questions is rather annoying. Here are some quotes from you that brought about my questions in regards to the position that “elite producers” objected to sweet wine production when it took off in THIS century:
We can with some measure of certainty conclude that the best German Rieslings of the past, those from which Germany initially gained its high reputation were dry with a few bottles of BA and TBA thrown in for good measure, but these were great rarities.
Cellar technology rapidly out-paced innovation in the vineyard and when filtration (led by the German company now called Begerow/Eaton), cooling jackets, and steel tanks became more available, it became possible for virtually every producer, led by large co-operatives to produce sweeter wine at much lower prices than that of those great dessert wine rarities of BA and TBA. The addition of Süssreserve (sweet, heavily sulfured, unfermented grape-juice) or arresting the fermentation meant that low-quality (either heavily rotten and/or under-ripe, high-cropped, high acid) grapes could be processed by cutting corners in the vineyard and buffering the result with sugar, in effect covering up the flaws. The high quality, elite producers of the era banded together in an attempt to legally block the production of such wines. When those attempts failed, and the public demand for cheap sweeter wines rose, the great producers adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude and Germany became known in the 1970s and 1980s as a sweet-wine producer, led of course by Liebfraumilch (which incidentally has been involved in court cases since the 1909 German wine law became ratified as a detriment to the German wine ‘Brand’.)
Are you now claiming this happened in the 19th century? By your timeline this appears to be around the 50/60’s. If so then I imagine these elite producers, many of which are still making wine clearly, would still have some of these dry jewels around their cellars. And why did they shift all of their top end production to sweet wines if this about the cheap Liebfraumilch wines? Are you suggesting that these “elite producers” have merely been making cheap wines to cover up their botrytis issues for the last 60 years?
I am actually kind of surprised about all of this inquiry.
Of course you are! Why would anyone not just agree with your opinions?
Have you had a Burklin-Wolf GC from a good vintage with about 10 years of age (say, a 2001 around now)? How about Donnhoff or Keller GG (the former seem to go through awkward phases at times, but when they’re on, I think they’re really great)? There are many others, but those are a few that I think make compelling arguments for the possibility of extremely high quality trocken Riesling from Germany. I might struggle a bit with the value of these wines compared with Spatlese from several good producers, but I think the quality is top notch. I’m not saying they’re better than sweeter wines, but I think they can be as good as most.
Interesting Doug - I love the Donnhoff GGs, but have never had a Keller dry wine that rocked my world.
I have seen you say that before, and I wonder if it’s the style that you don’t like. I know someone else whose palate is leaning very much away from that rich, bold style of dry(ish) Riesling. Kellers that have really impressed me recently include '07 and '10 Abtserde, and I thought '07 Kirchspiel was pretty rocking as well, though not quite on the level of the Abtserdes. Maybe they just taste different to me than they do to you.