German wine is primarily produced in the southwest of Germany, along river Rhine and its tributaries, with the oldest plantations going back to the Roman era. Approximately 60 percent of the German wine production is situated in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where 6 of the 13 regions (Anbaugebiete) for quality wine are situated. Germany has about 102,000 hectares (252,000 acres or 1,020 square kilometers) of vineyard, which is around one tenth of the vineyard surface in Spain, France or Italy. The total wine production is usually around 9 million hectoliters annually, corresponding to 1.2 billion bottles, which places Germany as the eighth largest wine-producing country in the world. White wine accounts for almost two thirds of the total production.  (See Classification of German Sweet Wine)

Austrian wines are mostly dry white wines often made from the Grüner Veltliner grape  (see Grüner Veltliner) with some luscious dessert wines made around the Neusiedler See. About 30% of the wines are red, made from Blaufränkisch (also known as Lemberger, or as Kékfrankos in neighbouring Hungary), Pinot Noir and locally bred varieties such as Zweigelt. Four thousand years of winemaking history counted for little after the "antifreeze scandal" of 1985, when it was revealed that some wine brokers had been adulterating their wines with diethylene glycol. The scandal destroyed the market for Austrian wine, but in the long term has been a force for good, compelling Austria to tackle low standards of bulk wine production, and reposition itself as a producer of quality wines that stand comparison with the best in the world. The country is also home to Riedel, makers of some of the most expensive wine glasses in the world.  (See Wine Regions of Austria).

More than 90% of the wines in Alsace are white. Riesling and Gewurzt are among the best white wines in France. (See Appellations of Alsace) Wine makers raise them in a style you can't find anywhere else but in a wine from Alsace.   The most important wines in Alsace are: Riesling (23% of Alsace wines), Gewurztraminer (18%), Pinot Blanc (20%), Tokay Pinot Gris (13%), Sylvaner (12%) and Crémant d'Alsace (a sparkling wine).  Other wines from Alsace are: Vendanges Tardives (late harvest), Edelzwicker, Muscat, Pinot Noir, etc.

Classification of German Sweet Wine

German wine classification is sometimes the source of confusion, especially to non-German speakers. However, to those familiar with the terms used, a German wine label reveals much information about the quality level and dryness/sweetness of the wine.

• Deutscher Tafelwein (German table wine) is mostly consumed in the country and not exported.
• Deutscher Landwein (German country wine) comes from a larger designation and again doesn't play an important role in the export market.
• Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA) wines are simple wines that meet the first level of quality.
• Prädikatswein, recently (August 1, 2007) renamed from Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP) wines are of greater quality. The grapes for these wines must meet a certain level of ripeness. As ripeness increases, the fruit characteristics and price increase.
• Kabinett wines are made from grapes picked several days after the QbA grapes are picked. These are the first picked grapes of the Prädikat level.
• Spätlese wines ("late harvest") are made from grapes harvested 12–14 days after the Kabinett grapes are picked.
• Auslese wines ("select harvest") are made from grapes that have been hand-selected out from the other grapes. These grapes are late-harvest and have a high sugar content.
• Beerenauslese wines ("berry selection") are made from grapes that have been left on the vine longer than the Auslese grapes. These grapes develop the fungus Botrytis, which removes the moisture from the grape. Thus these wines are very sweet and make good dessert wines.
• Eiswein (ice wine) wine is made grapes that freeze naturally on the vine and reach a sweetness of Beerenauslese level. The grapes are harvested and pressed in the frozen state. The ice keeps part of the water isolated to achieve the high sugar content of these wines.
• Trockenbeerenauslese wines ("dry berries selection") are extremely sweet, concentrated and usually quite expensive wines. The grapes used for Trockenbeerenauslese have reached an even more raisin-like state than those used for Beerenauslese.

In addition, wines are classified by the Verband Deutscher Prädikatswein (VDP). Top wines are classified according to region and the very best vineyards.

On wine labels, German wine may be classified according to the residual sugar of the wine. Trocken refers to dry wine. These wines have less than 9 grams/liter of residual sugar. These bottles are usually identified by a yellow-coloured capsule. Halbtrocken wines are off-dry and have 9-18 grams/liter of residual sugar. Due to the high acidity ("crispness") of many German wines, the taste profile of many halbtrocken wines fall within the "internationally dry" spectrum rather than being appreciably sweet. "Feinherb" wine are slightly more sweet than halbtrocken wines.

There are also several terms to identify the grower and producers of the wine.

• Weingut refers to a wine producing estate.
• Weinkellerei refers to a winery.
• Winzergenossenschaft refers to a winegrowers' co-operative wine.
• Gutsabfüllung refers to a grower/producer wine that is estate bottled.
• Abfüller refers to a bottler or shipper.

If the suffix "-er" appears after the name of the town, the wine comes from a particular vineyard located in that town.

Appellations of Alsace

Alsace AOC

Unlike most other French wine regions, there is only one AOC appellation for most wines made in the whole of Alsace. In 2006, 78 per cent of the Alsatian vineyards were producing wine under the Alsace AOC appellation. Other French wine regions have numerous appellations within them, often designating wine from a particular town or, even, an area within a certain town. Alsace AOC wines are often sold with one of the varietal labels or similar designations that are allowed under the AOC rules. In some cases, a lieu-dit, the name of a vineyard, is also displayed on the bottle. Neither the varietal labels or the lieux-dits are separate appellations; all carry "Appellation Alsace Contrôlée" on the label.

Alsace Grand Cru AOC

The Alsace Grand Cru AOC, which is a separate appellation, was not created until 1975. As of 2009, there are currently 51 lieux-dits listed as Grand Cru. All wines labeled with the Alsace Grand Cru designation must be produced from the noble Alsace varieties: Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris and Gewürztraminer grapes. These wines can be produced as late harvest wines and labeled either Sélection de Grains Nobles (SGN) or Vendange tardive (VT).

Crémant d'Alsace AOC

Crémant d'Alsace is an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée for sparkling wines. It is made using the traditional method (bottle fermentation), mostly from Pinot Blanc grapes, but it may also contain Pinot Gris, Riesling, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. (Chardonnay may not be used in the two Alsace appellations for still wines.) Rosé Crémant d'Alsace is made exclusively from Pinot Noir grapes. It was granted AOC status on August 24, 1976.

Crémant d'Alsace is a significant part of the wine production in Alsace, with 18% of the region's vineyards used for this purpose. 223 942 hectoliter of Crémant d'Alsace, approximately 30 million bottles, were produced in 2006.

The history of sparkling wine production in Alsace is said to go back to around the year 1900, when Julien Dopff is said to have applied the "champagne method" to his own Alsatian wines with satisfactory results.

Wine Regions of Austria

The Wine Regions of Austria

Bordering the Czech Republic and Hungary is a swathe of Austrian vineyards - to try and take on a detailed knowledge of all these regions is a daunting proposal; fortunately, to get acquainted with Austrian wine, such an exhaustive approach is not necessary. It is better we start with the three or four regions of most significance; I would begin with Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal most certainly, and as acknowledgement to the fabulous sweet wines produced around Lake Neusiedl, we should quickly look at the Neusiedlersee region.

The triad of Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal neighbour one another in Lower Austria (one of the country's nine states), and are the three regions now most on the lips of wine drinkers. Collectively they are the source of many of the high quality dry Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners that have fuelled the Austrian wine renaissance. This is a region of great natural beauty, and the steep terraced slopes around the Danube, as it flows through Wachaul, en route for Hungary, have been declared a World Heritage site. The topography of Kremstal, named for the town of Krems, site of the region's viticultural college, is somewhat different, as the land opens out and the Danube flows across a great plain. Kamptal is named after the River Kamp, a tributary of the Danube which now flows to the south; here the activity centres around the busy town of Langenlois. The regions boast a number of Austria's top winemakers.

To the southeast, down around Lake Neusiedl (Neusiedlersee), there is another region with a reputation for great wines. This is Burgenland, another of Austria's nine states, and the Neusiedlersee fosters the damp conditions that are right for the development of Botrytis. Thus the greatest wines produced here are sweet.

Grüner Veltliner

Grüner Veltliner
(GREW-nuhr Felt-LEEN-ehr)
a.k.a. Weissgipfler, Veltliner

Grüner Veltliner is Austria's most famous grape variety. It is indigenous to Austria and is grown extensively in every Austrian wine region with the exception of Steiermark. It constitutes 36% of all vineyard plantings with the best wines coming from the north-east of the country, particularly regions such as the Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal which border the Danube river.

Grüner Veltliner is a late ripening variety that typically produces wines that are pale green in colour and display fruit notes of grapefruits, limes, pears, and sometimes hints of white pepper. They normally possess a steely backbone of acidity which enables the best bottles to age gracefully. The grape's natural acidity accompanied by its restrained and understated fruit characters makes its wines ideal partners for food. A marvellous alternative to the more "mainstream" white grape varieties.

Grüner Veltliner is the most widely planted grape variety in Austria, accounting for 37 percent of the country's total vineyard area, about 50,875 acres. Most of these vines are in the large wine region known as Niederösterreich (Lower Austria), along the Danube River north of Vienna. It also grows in a few other Eastern European countries, such as Slovakia, Yugoslavia and the Czech Republic, but the variety is most closely associated with Austria, where it has been cultivated since Roman times. Simply put, Grüner Veltliner is the indigenous variety of Austria.

Until recently, Grüner Veltliner had always been considered a high-production commercial grape, best suited for the simple, easy-drinking wines that flow so freely in the ubiquitous Heurigen (wine pubs) of Austria. Like Riesling, this variety adapts easily to many soil types and can tolerate higher crop levels. Thus, it seemed a natural fit for the Lenz Moser vine training system. This system, named for the Austrian producer who developed it, was designed for high yields in widely spaced vineyards that could easily be worked with machines to reduce labor costs. The result was light, simple wines -- and lots of them.

Since the early 1980s, when the quality pendulum started swinging back toward the positive side in Austria, the Lenz Moser system has fallen out of favor. Austria's serious winemakers have discovered that, with lower yields and higher ripeness, Grüner Veltliner can produce stunningly intense and concentrated wines. Even the simple wines, from overcropped vines and underripe fruit, can have very pleasant citrus and grapefruit aromas, with a hint of the variety's most distinguishing characteristic: the spicy fragrance of freshly ground white pepper.

Today's better wines, however, from top sites and lower yields, can be astonishingly complex, full of exotic tropical fruits, white pepper and lentils. They can also show aromas of green beans or asparagus, an engaging "vegetable" smell that is seldom "vegetal", especially when grown in mineral soil.

There is a vast amount of ordinary Grüner Veltliner grown in the Weinviertel, a district within Niederösterreich and Austria's single largest winegrowing area. Although there is some potential here, the wines are mostly of the simple sort and primarily consumed locally at the many wine pubs. Currently the best wines from this variety are being made in the three smaller, adjoining districts along the Danube: the Wachau, Kremstal and Kamptal.

In just a couple of decades, the Wachau has become widely known as the source of some of the most powerful, incisive dry Rieslings made today. The steep, terraced vineyards and very warm climate here provide exceptional ripeness for massive, big-boned wines.

The predominance of primary rocksoils (granite and gniess) gives the wines a nearly monolithic structure that is mysteriously nimble; forceful without being overbearing; big without being heavy. Grüner Veltliner grown in these soils also shows this massive build, becoming deeply perfumed and complex as they age. It is like drinking liquid stone.

While the finest Grüner Veltliners from the Wachau are deep and powerful, the most elegant examples of this variety come from the Kremstal and Kamptal. Here, sandy loam and loess soils are lighter than those in the Wachau, but still very much mineral in composition. Grüner Veltliner finds its finest balance in loess, the fine-grained, densely compacted glacial dust that has blown in over many thousands of years. The best wines from this type of soil will age gracefully for many years, becoming ever more elegant and refined as the decades pass.

It's ability to age beautifully is one of the many interesting characteristics that Grüner Veltliner shares with Riesling. Both varieties have naturally high acidity, an essential component of wine that will age well. With today's improved winemaking technology, it is still too soon to say how the modern versions of wines from either grape will age for the long term, but the indications are quite positive. And in the Wachau, the consensus seems to be that Grüner Veltliner will ultimately be the longer lived variety.

Grüner Veltliner also matches Riesling's ability to capture the essential character of a particular vineyard through its crystalline clarity and purity of flavor (i.e. lack of oak treatment). Thus, it is very interesting to taste examples from different vineyards side by side, especially wines that have some age because, with time, they become more and more expressive of their origins.

In Austria, however, it is still very much the tradition to drink the wine as young as possible, which is somewhat regrettable; and to drink them with food, which is absolutely correct. Grüner Veltliner is perhaps the single most versatile food wine in the world, often surpassing even Riesling because of its ability to pair with "difficult" foods such as artichokes and asparagus.

Except for an occasional dessert wine made from botrytis-affected grapes, Grüner Veltliner is usually a full-bodied dry wine (up to 14% alcohol) with a firm mineral backbone, giving it the strength of character to work well with many cuisines. It is especially well suited to modern cooking that focuses on the fresh flavor of local ingredients and the variety is eagerly being embraced by creative chefs and innovative sommeliers around the world.

A wine made of Grüner Veltliner typically has a perfumed nose, with hints of peach and other citrus and, most notably, hints of white pepper - white pepper is usually what distinguishes Grüner Veltliner best. Wines from this grape are typically dry with high acidity. It generally light to medium bodied but can be made in a richer, full-bodied style. The wines of Grüner Veltliner are high in acid and extremely versatile with food. Some winemakers in Austria are making sweet wines with the grape as well.