Germany

Sommeliers and wine critics, well acquainted with its charms and severity, perpetually fight its underdog status, waging a long information campaign to educate casual wine drinkers that not all German Riesling is sweet. It’s a versatile grape in terms of sugar: Riesling offers a little or a lot of sweetness—or lacks it completely. We announce its purity, its effortless expression of terroir, its usefulness as a foil for many styles of cuisine, its ability to age magnificently in the cellar. Certainly no country in the world is more tied to the fortunes of Riesling than Germany, which grows almost half of the world’s total supply. But even as the variety finally ascended to become the Germans’ most planted grape in the last days of the 20th century, the country has a richer field of varieties than the stereotype suggests—and the Germans love drinking dry wines! (From 1985 to 2015, the percentage of total German wines vinified dry shot up from 16 to 46%.) Today, a sommelier well-versed in Germany’s offerings should understand its trocken styles, its noble sweet wines, everything in between, red wines, Silvaner, Pinot Blanc, and other grape varieties coming from a diverse set of growing regions and soils, wrapped up in tradition, reclaimed by modern voices, defined in wine law but often exemplified in extralegal categories, rendered obscure by the fearsome constructs of its own language, and… Ah, well. Achtung!

Setting the Stage

Vitis vinifera arrived in Germany with the Romans, whose legionnaires crossed the Alps over 2,000 years ago and extended their eastern frontier to the Rhine River, far from the traditional bases of viticulture in their Mediterranean homeland. Germanic tribes adopted