German Wine Labels by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring German Culture through Wine Labels by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for five years in the mid-2010s.  I did not know much about Germany when I arrived, so I began researching the country with books. 

I like cooking and doing wine industry tourism and began my research with The New German Cookbook written by Jean Anderson and Hedy Würz (1993, Harper Collins Publishers). 

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, so the recipes in this book are mostly from what was “West Germany.”  I knew that Stuttgart was part of “West Germany” and thought I could get some tips for grocery shopping and recipes with this book.

The first section I went through was the wine section.  The Germans have a very methodical classification system for their wines that is different from the French one. 

The German system confounds everyone in France, because Germans mostly produce Riesling white wine.  The German classification system is based on sugar content in the wines.

The French and Germans do agree on the following points according to Anderson and Würz:

-“A delicate dish calls for a light and subtle wine.”

A delicate dish could be items such as fish with non-spicy sauces, vegetable terrines with tomato coulis sauces, sautéed scallops, garlic shrimp (light on the garlic), and hors d’oeuvres.

-“Robust recipes call for more vigorous wines.”

Main dishes go well with Rieslings and Franconian reds.  Veal and pork terrines go well with Rieslings I think.

This is a brief explanation of the classification of German wines that is based on the amount of sugar in the wine according to Anderson and Würz.

Geman AOC wines are called Qualitätsstufen, or quality wines, as the overarching broad category of excellent wines that are inspected for quality control and sold internationally.

Under this category are QbA wines (Qualitäts bestimmer Aubaugebiete wines).  QbA wines come from Gemany’s approved growing areas.  (Check a recent wine reference book as these regions do change.  They change slowly, but they do change.)

Under Qualitätswein and QbA wines come the following subgroups in ascending order (more sugar the higher you go) of sugar content:

-Qualitäts mit Prädikat (QmP) wines

-Kabinett

-Spätlese

-Auslese

-Beerenauslese

-Eiswein

-Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA)

TBA wines have the most sugar and are the rarest and most expensive of German wines. 

A combination of climate and northern growing regions make German wines sweeter than French ones.

Anderson and Würz list 4 marketing terms that are useful when purchasing German wine among several listed in The New German Cookbook:

1-Riesling on a German wine label means that 85% of that varietal must be used in the wine

2-Prädikat – indicates how ripe (sugary) the grapes were at harvest

3-trocken = driest taste

4-halbtrocken = dry taste, but not as dry as trocken.  Halb = half

Jane Anderson and Hedy Würz detail these items, especially with food pairings in The New German Cookbook with its 230 recipes.  I still like this cookbook after all these years.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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