Travels in wine country: the Renaissance of German Riesling

 By John Schreiner

August 3, 2008

Flanked by vineyard-draped slopes, the ruins of Schloss Ehrenfels still tower over the narrowest neck on the Rhine, just downstream from the wine community of Rüdesheim.

The castle was built in the 13th Century by the Archbishops of Mainz, enabling them to police the collection of river tolls and to provide secure storage for their treasury. It was left in ruins in 1689 by invading French and Swedish armies. Recently, about 3.5 million Euros was spent on a partial restoration. The local wineries expected to use the castle for grand tastings until it was discovered that an endangered species of raptors nests there now, putting the ruin off limits for visitors.

This castle gave its name to the Ehrenfelser grape, one of many varieties that the plant breeders at Geisenheim University named for castle ruins on the Rhine. The irony is that the vines on the steep vineyards along the Rhine are much more likely to be Riesling than Ehrenfelser, a 1929 cross of Riesling and Silvaner.

Recently, I was taken within a stone’s throw of the still majestic castle while being toured through the vineyards by Rüdesheim vintner Heinrich Breuer. His winery, Weingut Georg Breuer, has 33 hectares of vineyard scattered across these south-facing slopes. This includes some new plots on recently rebuilt terraces as German wineries, prosperous again, are returning once-abandoned sections of the slope to grapes. The rising demand and appreciation of Riesling around the world make it economic for growers like Breuer to put all of their land back into production.

Once again, Riesling is the queen of German vineyards. That represents a big change from a generation ago when the most extensively planted variety in German was bland Müller-Thurgau and when all sorts of recently-bred varieties, including Ehrenfelser, threatened to replace a lot of good Riesling. The crosses were embraced because, generally, they ripened earlier with higher sugars and bigger tonnages than Riesling.

Consequently, a lot of mediocre white wine started to come from Germany in the 1970s and German wines lost market share all over the world. Within the past decade or so, German vintners have gone back to basics,  refocusing on Rieslings. Once again, the world wants to drink these wines.

Several things have happened to bring about this change in the market that has Heinrich Breuer reclaiming his splendid sites.

One seems to be climate change. As seasons have warmed, it is no longer as hard to ripen Riesling as it was. There is less need for the sugar-factory varieties that were supposed to “improve” on Riesling.

“We are not worried about climate change,” Breuer says. “Before, we had one good vintage in seven. Now, we have one bad vintage in seven. The Riesling grape has been here for 500 years and there have been warm cycles before. We can manage the vineyards to react to the climate. We are sure we will not have to take out Riesling and plant Chardonnay.”

Secondly, there have been profound changes in the style of German wines, most of which now are dry and designed to go with food. Thirdly, German wine labels are much more accessible than they used to be.

Fourth, the new prosperity of the German wine industry has triggered a lot of investment in modern winemaking equipment. A 16 million Euro winery has just been completed at Kloster Eberbach, one of Germany’s most historic wineries. The cloister was established by Cistercian monks from France about eight centuries ago, who brought vines with them. The cloister and its vineyards were secularized in Napoleon’s day. Since the end of World War II, the 131-hectare estate has been owned by the state of Hessen.

It is something of a sore point with private sector wineries that so much public money has been lavished at what is, without doubt, one of Germany’s slickest new wineries. No one, however, disputes that the estate, 99% planted to Riesling, already makes top wines and, with its new cellar technology, should notch all of its wines up another level.

Breuer’s new plantings and Kloster Eberbach’s shiny new winery make the point: this is a good time to be a German Riesling producer.

John Schreiner recently was a judge at the best of Riesling 2008 international wine competition.

goodgrog@shaw.ca

                                                                         
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