The wines of Germany, unlike the wines of countries such as France, Portugal and Italy, were classified in 1971. The law, in a bid to simplify things for consumers, simply focussed on ripeness levels of the crop: higher ripeness would mean more concentration and flavour. And, only a piece of land that has truly gifted soil and exposure would be capable of yielding forth such grapes, so there would be no need to worry about classifying and naming each piece of land. That’s how Burgundy works, but then all wine lovers know how complex Burgundy can get.
The trouble with this system was that it overlooked terroir entirely; as long as a grape was ripe, it could achieve a certain nomenclature, but it didn’t account for typicity as granted by Nature. Provenance, where the grape came from, a big factor in deciding the final taste of the wine, was blatantly missing.
And so, a group of German winemakers came together with the solemn resolve to amend this oversight and to make quality wines under a new non-political non-national banner, the VDP. Not to be confused with VdP from France, which is a colloquial abbreviation for Vins de Pays, a rather basic entry level of classification.
Th VDP family of wines, by contrast, would comprise invitation-only members, who stand by high quality and understand regionality similarly, and their oath to conform to certain classic pre-decided standards would be represented by the picture of “an eagle with grapes in its belly” on the bottle neck of all their wines.
They went a step further and classified their wines into four levels:
Gutswein: Basic regional wine
Ortswein: Village level wine
Erste Lage: Premier Cru wines
Grosse Lage: Grand Cru, which would change to Grosses Gewächs (GG) in case of dry wines
Today, there are about 200 members of VDP, who make the highest quality of German wines. Some are already in India and shall be joined by a few others presently. They comply not only with the grapes they are allowed to grow, but also with how the final wine tastes. There is leeway to experiment and self-expression, but not at the cost of sacrificing a sense of regional style.
Dryness in German wines remains a variable concept, changing with region, depending on how much acidity is present in the wine, because when acidity is high (highly sour wine), more sugar can be left behind to balance tartness. The idea is to think of sugar as not just the presence of sweetness but also as the counterbalance to sourness.
In the coming year, I shall be involved in helping propagate more German wines here, and one thing I intend to do is showcase Riesling in all its terroir-specific glory. Fifty shades of Riesling! It promises to be more exciting than that book.
