Читать книгу The Moselle Cycle Route. From the source to the Rhine at Koblenz онлайн

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Historically, most wine production (mainly for German consumption) was dry white wine produced from Riesling and Silvaner grapes. In the 1960s, in order to satisfy a perceived demand for sweeter wines in export markets (particularly the UK and US), considerable acreage of Müller-Thurgau was planted at the expense of Silvaner. However, as the UK wine market developed, tastes became steadily drier and German (usually medium–sweet) wine’s share of UK sales has declined significantly. There has been some movement back towards producing drier wines and an alteration to the strict German wine classification rules in 2000 has encouraged this. Nowadays the acreage of Müller-Thurgau declines each year. An older local grape, Elbling, is also grown, although this is mostly used for non-varietal production of sekt (sparkling wine).

German wine labels can only show varietals (Riesling for instance) if at least 85 per cent of grapes are from a single variety. If no varietal is shown, the wine is either a blend or even pure Müller-Thurgau. Labels also indicate increasing levels of wine quality, Tafelwein, Landwein, Qualitätswein, and Prädikatswein (roughly equivalent to the French designations Vin de Table, Vin de Pays, VDQS and Appellation Contrôlée). The best-quality wine (Prädikatswein) is further divided into six categories, which tell you little about the characteristics of the wine in the bottle but indicate increasing levels of ripeness of the grapes used. The first three of these (Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese) can be dry (trochen), medium (halbtrochen) or sweet (lieblich, although this is often not shown on the label) depending upon the production process followed in the winery: basically, a longer fermentation allows more sugar to turn to alcohol, giving a stronger, drier wine, but in practice things are more complicated. The other three descriptions (Beerenauslese, Eiswein and Trochenbeerenauslese) denote sweet dessert wines. Classification changes made in 2000 introduced two categories that are specific to dry wines intended mostly for the export market: ‘Classic’ is a dry wine made from traditional local grape varieties with an alcohol level of at least 11.5 per cent, and ‘Selection’, which is another name for a trochen Auslese.