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Rethinking German wines
Article Posted: Thursday August 30th
Article last updated on: Thursday August 30th
But what will it go with? Fine German Wines can rescue us from the tyranny of the dinner table, argues Clifford Mould Our Tradition of Hock drinking
In Victorian and Edwardian times the cellars of the nobility and gentry housed probably as much wine from the Rhine and Mosel as from the Medoc and Burgundy. Two world wars with the French as allies and the Germans as adversaries were but temporary setbacks to the export of German wines. Fashions and tastes have undoubtedly changed over the last generation. German fine wine producers have to some extent been the victims of the success of the mass production side of their own industry. For many young Britons, Liebfraumilch - a brand concept largely unknown to the Germans themselves - is the wine they are most likely to begin drinking. If they are ever weaned off it, (and do not forget that millions of bottles continue to be drunk every year), they remember it with a frisson of embarrassment and shun tall shaped bottles with gothic script on the label. Instead of graduating to better quality wine, novice wine drinkers are more likely to be converted to the ever increasing range of lagers which are invading the British drinks market. Eighty percent of the German wine sold in the UK costs less than four pounds a bottle. Even the Germans themselves, encouraged by all their foreign travel have discovered the delights of foreign wine. They are drinking robust Southern Hemispherical reds, and crisp dry Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs. German wine makers have responded by creating drier, fully fermented, more alcoholic whites, designed to accompany food. Riesling, the noblest grape As Simon Loftus points out in his introduction to the Riesling grape, Germany is the natural home to what is arguably the world's most noble white grape. Capable of expressing such a range of styles from the subtlest Trocken to the richest noble rotted Beerenauslese, this grape is also being grown and turned into marvellous wine in the newer wine regions of the Southern Hemisphere. Far from being another distraction from the art of German winemaking, this wider interest has encouraged the wandering winemakers to visit Germany and there has been an exciting cross-fertilisation of ideas. Riesling's near relatives, as well as other German vines, have been succesfully transplanted to other cool climate regions, even here in Britain. Wine and food - Love and marriage? The very culture of wine drinking seems to have militated against the enjoyment of fine German wine. Wine drinking for the masses in countries of anglo-saxon culture is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since the sixties the growth in popularity of the dinner party, where a degree of culinary competence is routinely complemented by wine, has meant that a generation of drinkers has grown up expecting to drink wine only with food: "Get something decent darling, the Browns always lay on a good spread!" The often poor quality of wine found in pubs and at parties, and the increasing popularity of white spirits and lighter beers has reinforced the fasion for drinking decent wine only when your knees are under the table. Wine for its own sake
But German wines, with their generally lower alcohol levels and refreshing acidity balancing a delicious honeyed character, ask first to be enjoyed alone. Let us cultivate the delight of opening a bottle of wine and drinking it in the sitting room as an acompaniment to conversation. Even when served as a pre-dinner drink, all too often a bottle of wine has to compete with mayonnaise-based dips, chillie-laced salsa, or oaked smoked tortilla chips. It's almost as though we are frightened to experience the true taste of wine itself, so we have to mask it with other stronger flavours. Dare to dessert In my article about Sauternes, I argued that we felt obliged to refer to such nectar as "dessert wine". Only if there is a rich pudding in the offing do we dare to crack open the Climens. Well if this is true of Climens it's certainly true of Maximin Gr
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