Sweet-nothings in German
You’re on your friend’s terrace, enjoying a German white – a soft sweetness that matches your mood, and a crispness that’s really clicking with the chicken sausage on your plate.
You turn the bottle around to look at the label and…whoah. A castle, a crest, and some really long words in Renaissance Faire gothic. Huzzah, indeed.
Germans, as wine and people, are increasingly self-aware in their natural tempérament towards anal retention and organization, and can now make light of this.
Theirs is the motherland of Riesling, rediscovered as an Ooh-la-la! food wine for its clear balance of sweetness and acidity. Reading a Germanic wine label, however, is to make your tongue feel trapped in a Dark Ages manuscript.
There is, of course, a German system for categorizing via by ripeness and sweetness. Your partisan hereby offers a code breaker:
QmP designates particular quality wines from dry to sweet:
• Kabinett: light-bodied, crisp and dry; conceive of a green apple
• Spätlese: late harvest, riper and fuller-body than Kabinett; dry to slightly-sweet
• Auslese: riper yet, with residual sugar; best when aged
• Beernauslese: rare, sweet wines from hand-picked late grapes; no beer involved
• Eiswein: ja, ‘ice wine’ from frozen grapes harvested by frozen fingers, hence expensive; frequently saved for dessert
• Trockenbeerenauslese: rare, rich, legendary wine from grapes dried on the vine – you do not need to love its sweetness, but at least sip, as someone is ordering to impress
Dive in and explore these sweet, misunderstood wines. Their labor-intensive traditions belong in your glass, rather than any castle keep.