Manic Germanic

GERRIE LIM takes on the trials and tribulations of tasting 25 tipples from Teutonic terroirs

SEVERAL LARGE WINDOWS offer breathtaking sea views of Deep Water Bay, as we traverse his inner sanctum. “Thank you for coming to my house,” says Werner Hans Lauk, consul general of the Federal Republic of Germany in Hong Kong. “Most of you don’t know me, since I have been in Hong Kong for only 10 months, but I can tell you I am enjoying it here. You see, my previous posting was Afghanistan.”

Laughter erupts around our table, an intrepid coterie of writers and retailers and wine-trade flunkies, but his words are already setting the tone. Dry humour and dry wine would be apt bedfellows on this afternoon. Next to Herr Lauk stands a tall American dude, his Cheshire-cat grin discernable under his professorial beard. “I hope you all have some stamina,” Joel Payne quips before taking us through no fewer than 25 German wines and an equally mindboggling PowerPoint presentation entitled Erste Lage of VDP: Die Prädikatsweingüter. Payne happens to be both the current vice-president of the International Circle of Wine Writers and, more importantly, author of the Gault Millau WeinGuide, the renowned German wine bible for the past 12 years.

We quickly learn that Payne enjoys playing court jester. He begins this tasting with two examples of Silvaner, the easy-drinking white wine that has done for Germany what Soave once did for Italy, earning the “Sauvignon plonk” sobriquet reserved for wines of questionable quality. If German wines remain underappreciated today, Payne informs us, that’s because of two things: first, the silly German wine laws of 1971, which ironically undermined wine sales thanks to several loops of byzantine legislation (of which the less said, the better); and second, the gobbledegook on those print-heavy German wine labels. The British wine critic Hugh Johnson, Payne tells us, once joked that Oxford University should offer a course on how to read German wine labels. “It’s not like Burgundy, where all you see is the name of the winemaker and his village,” Payne adds blithely. “This is because the Germans are very precise, but they’re also very anal.”

More giddy laughter follows. Interestingly, he points out, modern German winemakers have modelled themselves after Burgundy, and when the Silvaners have made way for two Weisser Burgunder (“white Burgundy” made from Pinot Blanc), Payne points to his glass and beckons one of our wine stewards: “Can I have some more? I find I speak better when I’m inebriated.” He isn’t kidding, for he then launches into his dissertation: how a new German wine classification system arose in 2006 so that deciphering German wine labels became as simple as scoffing down sauerkraut. The best German wines are now considered Erste Lage – akin to Burgundy grands crus, designated on each bottle by a logo of a cluster of grapes with a number 1 next to it.

Additionally, the best dry Erste Lage wines are now called Grosses Gewächs (“great growth”) – the exception is in the Rheingau region, where they’re called Erstes Gewächs – and quality control is strictly monitored by the Verband Deutscher Prädikats- und Qualitätsweingüter (VDP), an association of the top German growers from the 13 major wine regions. Members of this consortium have been expelled, Payne informs us, whenever the quality of their wines is deemed unworthy.

And it is from this world of the VDP on which this tasting is based, although Payne gleefully throws some spanners into the works. The stars of this afternoon are 14 Rieslings, yet two of them are Riesling Spätlese – the sweeter, late-harvest Rieslings that so happen to be the white wines my palate finds least agreeable. They are a Juffer-Sonnenuhr (from Weingut Schloss Lieser – weingut means wine estate) and a Domprobst (from Weingut Willi Schaefer), both from the Mosel region. What’s interesting is that both are classified Erste Lage but are still not dry enough to be Grosses Gewächs. “I showed them,” Payne explains later, “so that, hopefully, all of you would begin to understand the goal.” Meaning that not all Erste Lage wines need to be of dry Grosses Gewächs quality, which sensibly opens up the competitive field (though, frankly, I still wish they tasted better).

Now, however, I’m starting to have a problem. After 14 consecutive Rieslings, I’m not quite sure what I’m tasting any more. My tongue feels like a dead fish. There are two Rieslings I do like: a rare Felseneck made by Tim Frölich of Weingut Schäfer-Frölich (only 5,000 bottles produced) and a Kirchenstück, an Erstes Gewächs wine from Weingut Künstler in Rheingau. We’d had two Grauer Burgunder before that, both from Baden: a Feuerburg from Weingut Bercher that’s easily my favourite wine of the day, matured in small oak barrels and malolactic-fermented (for a luscious, quasi-Montrachet taste), and a Schlossberg from Weingut Dr Heger matured in large oak casks, with a nice minerality despite a surprisingly toastier nose.

Finally, I heave a weary sigh as we reach the red wines: four Spätburgunder, the German version of Burgundy’s Pinot Noir. All four are of 2007 vintage (whereas all the whites are 2008). Respected wine writers such as Jancis Robinson have championed the cause of Spätburgunder, and the ones Payne has chosen comprise two from Ahr (Gärkammer, by Weingut JJ Adeneuer; and Rosenthal, by Weingut Jean Stodden), one from Pfalz (Rädling, by Weingut Bernhart) and one from Baden (Wildenstein, by Weingut Bernhard Huber). The Ahr pair are the best; Ahr has the cool climate that’s so conducive to growing Pinot Noir.

This contrast of styles, however, induces in me a mild paranoia. Am I being too harsh in comparing these reds with, say, the great Gevrey-Chambertin wines of Burgundy? No matter, since our jester springs yet another surprise – Payne suddenly adds a 25th wine: a Lemberger from Weingut Gerhard Aldinger in Württemberg, chosen because our host, the consul general, hails from that region. “This is also a Grosses Gewächs and the best example of that varietal produced in Germany,” Payne tells me. “Lemberger is a varietal that is called Blaufränkisch in Austria and Kékfrankos in Hungary. Fränkisch and Frankos are like Franken [Franconia] in Germany or France, the name of a Germanic tribe that once controlled northern Europe. The grape originated in the Pannonian Plain at a time when there were no borders.”

Ah, the notion of no borders! It’s hard now to imagine a time when Germany and France were one. Were it not for geographical boundaries, we could be drinking Pinot Noirs from the same country today. And I wouldn’t have to think of them as Spätburgunder and could imagine them as, say, Nuits-Saint-Georges. Well, maybe, if they had tasted like the Burgundy reds I know. But somehow they didn’t, though I concede that if my tongue had handled those 14 Rieslings better, I might have actually tasted that last Lemberger.

So, it might not have been the wine. Like a workman with his tools, can a tired taster blame his tongue? I used to think there could be hope yet for German wine, but now I think there might be hope for me.