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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