New German wine labeling law - how did we miss this?

This is frightening:

Just when we were recovering from the elimination of the Mosel-Sahr-Ruwer designation.

It seems that “geschützter Ursprungsbezeichnung” will be the preferred term for what was “Qualitätswein.” Catchy phrase, that one!

I read about this the other day. Rather than post, I just did this:
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“geschützter Ursprungsbezeichnung”
“bless you”
or not.

I haven’t had time to delve into the detail, but on the face of it a terroir based system is no less logical than one based on ripeness, especiailly with global warming.
Will Beriech begone?

It sounds like this might codify in law some of the rules that have emanated only from the VDP up to know, but the Forbes article doesn’t provide any context, or explain what of significance is changing.

This is not that big a deal if I understand it correctly.

  • Dry wines will be labeled GG (Grosses Gewächs) or perhaps EG (Erstes Gewächs) or will have village/regional names. Pretty much the same as now except that instead of some now (seemingly randomly) called Erste Lage, they will be more systematically called Erste Gewächs.
  • Non fully dry wines will use the same Prädikat system as now, perhaps with some the word Einzellage appearing somewhere. But Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett will still be Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett.

Seems like the real action will be argument over which vineyards get to be called GG and which get to be called EG.

What David Said.

What with each word longer than the preceding one, they probably gave up translating…

My understanding (most of this is coming from reading the Deutsches Weininstitut site) is that GG and EG will now have minimum definitions of potential alc./maximum harvest that are valid in all German wine regions. Further, all wine regions may now use EG. Currently only some, notably Pfalz, do but Mosel, Saar, Ruwer, Nahe, Rheinhessen do not. They all use GG only.

But I may not fully be grasping how new or passe this is, so please correct me, if need be.

Oh lord. Like someone said - if French wine looks simple by comparison, you’re doing it all wrong. Pair this with an impenetrable sweetness classification…

If in a hole, stop digging?

This is insane. It also does nothing to fix the problems with the current system and the confusion around Pradikat labeled wines from GG vineyards and the different rules for each area.

Since Germany wants a system like burgundy why don’t they simply go with that and then once a vineyard is designated as Grand Cru or Premier Cru any wine can be made from that vineyard. The only confusing part would be for things like Kabinett Trocken where a winemaker wanted to make a dry wine from a GG vineyard that was below the abv requirement for a dry wine. I am sure a solution could be found.

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Fixed it.

I echo Robert’s comments.

Also wish that in times of climate change like we have now that for each pradikat level they put an upper limit for Oechsle, not just a minimum.

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Even for TBA? :wink:

Since TBA is too rich even for me I don’t care what they do lol

Same here, but it’s more a concentration of botrytis issue for me. BA is about as far as I can generally go.

All the evidence is to the contrary, based on the last 50+ years of German wine labeling rules.

Well, they’ve finally adopted some of the VDP ideas, which could be good, but of course they’ve also mucked things up further in the process. Maybe a tiny piece of good is that Keller will finally be able to put “Abtserde” on the label, and other producers with historic sub-plots will be able to use the historic names. It sounds that way. Overall, I think this does nothing to make an already confusing system less confusing. It just makes it different. And will the VDP members now have to put a village name on the front of their GGs? It sounds like it. So, a half step forward and 3 steps back? Seems pretty typical for German wine regulations.

Well I’ll continue to be a naysayer (and I haven’t actually seen enough detail to fully judge yet). This seems like an improvement to me, with consistent naming conventions across all of Germany. Basically they are adding consistent labeling on top of all the existing mishmash. Perhaps a step towards even more consistency in the future?

I’ll go even further: I actually like the prädikat system. Yes it’s taken me several years to figure out what it actually means and that’s not great. But as long as producers want to make a zillion different levels of sweetness/richness I think it’s pretty cool to be able to have all these different expressions from a single vineyard. Would folks prefer just two Willi Schaefer wines from Graacher Domprobst - a GG and an Auslese?

In order to make the naming system simpler, we’d have to require the wine makers to make fewer wines. How horrible would that be?

Honest question - does K-P Keller really care about the Abtserde label? He seems to be doing fine. And the Abts E® label is now so iconic, I wouldn’t even change it at this point if I were him, even if I was allowed to.

I take this as a deep personal insult! [wow.gif] [snort.gif]

Sorry, I must be getting caught up in the internet. I’m kidding, of course.

I don’t know if he cares, and if he does, it obviously isn’t because he’s having a hard time selling his wine. I just think it looks bad that someone who has studied the historic vineyard plots as closely as he has, and actually owns one of them, is forbidden from using the name. It’s ridiculous. Part of the story that makes German wine so interesting is similar the the Burgundy story, right? Lots of individual vineyard sites, and even sub-plots, identified many generations ago that truly have distinctive character and produce high quality wines. I know I’m not saying anything you and most of the people on this board don’t know. It’s just to point out that this is one of many ways in which the German government has worked against its wineries’ efforts to market and sell their wines. With Keller it is particularly crazy because he knows so much about the history and is a great ambassador for German wines in general, even if only by way of his reputation.

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