Vintners Toast German Wine's Popularity RIESLING FROM THE RHINELAND AND OTHER DIVINE DROPS 1 Discounter Aldi

Pulls Top German Vintners Into Low-Cost Fold 2 German Vintners Feel Squeeze From New World Wines 3 EU Winemakers Likely to Be Asked to Dig Up Some Vines 4 Vintners Toast German Wine's Popularity 5 Family Winery Cultivates the Grape for 27 Generations 6 The Wines They Are A-Changin' 7 Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts 8 A Cycle Trip and Tipple Along the Moselle 9 Wrzburg: Where Drinking Wine Is Like Praying 10 Mainz: Modernity Meets Tradition 11 Koblenz: Good For Getting Over Jet Lag 12 Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts 13 At String of Summits, Merkel Ready to Serve The Finest Wine 14 Seaweed Wine Hits Germany's Stores 15 'Little Red Riding Hood' Sparkling Wine Flying High As the trade fair ProWein continues in Dsseldorf, Germany's wine industry has plenty to celebrate: Exports are booming. Still, vintners worry about what the future may bring. German wines have been gaining in popularity -worldwide It's a good time for German wine. Exports increased last year to 475 million euros ($569 million), 10 percent more than the previous year and the highest level they've been at since 1985 when an Austrian wine scandal had a devastating knock-on effect in Germany. Britain remains German wine's biggest importer followed by the US and the Netherlands. And consumers have been devoting more attention to Germany's top wines, Riesling above all. "The aficionados are in America first and foremost," said Prince Michael zu Salm-Salm, head of Germany's fine wine association VDP. "A Riesling boom is underway in the United States, a real renaissance. But the aficionados are also in southern Europe. In Italy,

in Spain we're gaining momentum dramatically. And we can truly say that it's a development that's beginning to have a worldwide effect." The success of Riesling doesn't merely have to do with the grape's flavor, but also with the increasing number of foreign journalists who give German wine good marks, particularly wine guru Robert Parker. Trouble brewing? Despite the boom in exports, German vintners are troubled by a recent addition to a winemaking agreement between the European Union and the United States. A coda to the accord, added in March, allows the Americans to export wines to Europe that have been chemically and physically treated using controversial techniques that are largely prohibited in Europe. Prince zu SalmSalm speaks for Germany's quality wine producers "There are two critical points to the agreement," said Monika Christmann, an expert on cellar techniques at Geisenheim Technical College. "For one, that all future techniques, that don't yet even exist, have been approved. That means that we must accept everything that comes from America in the future, and with that, the Americans practically set the standard worldwide. The second critical point is that an integral part of the agreement is that all these techniques can be employed without declaring it on the label." Thus, consumers won't be able to tell how a wine was treated and whether a wine labelled as having been produced "according to the manner of a Johannisberg Riesling" is indeed a Johannisberg Riesling. Power of the purse Two figures are crucial in order to understand why the EU agriculture ministers agreed to the deal: US wine exports to the EU were worth $325 million in 2005, while EU exports to the US were valued at $2.6 billion. But the agreement has caused quite a bit of hysteria in Europe, with a plethora of

newspaper articles upbraiding so-called artificial or plastic wines from the US, and largely demonstrating ignorance of the facts. Politicians from the German neo-Nazi NPD party also took advantage of the controversy to promote anti-American sentiments with their slogan "German wine instead of American rotgut." German vintners ended up feeling like they had to defend the US at the same time as criticizing it. Differences in cellar techniques have some vintners worried "The fact is, all over the world there are vintners who are craftsmen like us, said zu SalmSalm. "And in Europe, too, there are companies that are more used to working industrially." "In America, it's basically accepted -- not in California, but in other parts of America -- to add water to wine or to separate it with spinning doctor machines and then reconstruct it. Naturally, that goes entirely against our understanding of wine. ... We're opposed to the wine trade agreement and demand that improvements are made to it," he said. The deadline for changes to the deal ends in three months. By then it will be clear whether German vintners can save their designations of origin and whether it will become obligatory to declare particular cellar techniques. But neither outcome is likely. DW.DE

EU Winemakers Likely to Be Asked to Dig Up Some Vines RIESLING FROM THE RHINELAND AND OTHER DIVINE DROPS 1 Discounter Aldi Pulls Top German Vintners Into Low-Cost Fold 2 German Vintners Feel Squeeze From New World Wines 3 EU Winemakers Likely to Be Asked to Dig Up Some Vines 4 Vintners Toast German Wine's Popularity 5 Family Winery Cultivates the Grape for 27 Generations

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The Wines They Are A-Changin' Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts A Cycle Trip and Tipple Along the Moselle Wrzburg: Where Drinking Wine Is Like Praying Mainz: Modernity Meets Tradition Koblenz: Good For Getting Over Jet Lag Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts At String of Summits, Merkel Ready to Serve The Finest Wine Seaweed Wine Hits Germany's Stores 'Little Red Riding Hood' Sparkling Wine Flying High

Vintners in Europe are facing major reforms from 2008 that aim to cut production and enable wineries to hold their own against tough competition from competitors in Chile and Argentina. Winemakers will be asked to change the way they operate The reform plans are being finalized by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who wants to encourage producers to abandon some of the vineyards and put the focus on better quality wines, thereby putting supply more in line with demand. "I want to make a bold reform because just changing minor things wouldn't improve anything," Fischer Boel told reporters at an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers. At present, the EU produces much more wine then it sells, resulting in huge "lakes" of surplus product that Brussels spends millions of euros on to turn into undrinkable, industrial alcohol and biofuels. A key area that will be targeted will be "grubbing up," or digging up, vines by offering cash incentives for winemakers to abandon fields they don't absolutely need to use. The EU spends about 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) a year on wine subsidies. The planned reform, the first since 1999, would not change that amount. Instead, the plan would redirect subsidies and use a carrot-and-stick approach to convince European producers to rip up some of their vines, which amount for some 45 percent of the world's vineyard area.

Europe grows too many of these for current demand The plan is due to be published on June 22. EU governments and the wine industry will then have an opportunity to discuss the plan's various options until the autumn, when the European Commission will draft a formal reform proposal for publication in December or January. "Then we have the first half of 2007 to have an in-depth discussion with the member states, and I hope we can manage to finalize it before summer 2007," Fischer Boel said. "Then we need implementation, so that would be from 2008." Supply and demand The EU is the world's largest producer, consumer, exporter and importer of wine. But for many years, subsidies have thrown the relationship between wine supply and demand off balance, resulting in huge surpluses that could not be sold on the market. Fischer Boel has often complained of the money the EU spends on "crisis distillation," as much as half a billion euros per year ($642 million). In the 1990s, EU winemakers began shifting their emphasis to producing higher-quality wine, which closed the gap between supply and demand somewhat, but not as much as Brussels would like to see. Vintners will probably be offered cash to dig up some fields "In my view, what we need to do is to spend more money on marketing wine," Luxembourg's

agriculture minister, Fernand Boden, told reporters. "We have to use the money that's now spent on distillation in a more intelligent way, to promote consumption." Although Europe is still the major player on the global wine market, it has lost some of its traditional export market in recent years to cheaper wines from countries like Australia, Chile and the United States. The EU has also begun to import more. "A reform has to restore European wine production to be competitive with imports that we have seen from the new wine-producing countries," Fischer Boel said. But she said she expects resistance from vintners, especially since winemaking has such deep cultural roots in many regions. DW.DE

Where Now for German Wine? As German vintners announce an above average 2002 harvest, the German wine lobby is working to improve the beverage's image abroad. Germans know how good their wine is - the rest of us apparently don't There is no getting away from it. Next to the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) rule, bringing a bottle of Liebfraumilch or Blue Nun to a dinner party is the equivalent of committing social suicid -- German wine has a bad reputation. But now plans are afoot to change all this. The DeutschWeinVision 2020 is an attempt by the German wine industry to develop an all-encompassing long-term strategy to improve prices for wine growers at home and better the image of German wines abroad. Although it is still a work in progress, the first results and recommendations are expected by the end of the year. Small vintners cant cover costs The strategy has been necessitated by severe problems currently facing traditional wine growers in Germany. Many, mostly smaller, vintners who make wine in traditional wooden barrels are not able to demand prices for their product which enables them to cover production costs. As a result, larger, more commercially viable producers are overtaking the smaller wine makers. Rudolph Nickenig, spokesperson for the German Wine Association (VDW) told DW-WORLD the problem of low prices was threatening the very existence of small

wine growers who produce top quality German wines. Indeed, the number of smaller vintners has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years. According to a government report published this month, Germany had 50,000 producers in 1979. By 1999, the figure had fallen to 34,440. German wine - It used to be more Germans used to drink a higher percentage of domestically-produced wine, of course, Nickenig told DW-WORLD. Although Germans now drink more wine than beer downing a whopping 24 litres per head each year - only 45% of this is German wine. The remaining 55% hails from the vineyards of Italy, Spain, France and Chile among others. German wine drinkers tend to be quite adventurous theyre very curious of whats happening in New World wines for example. Thats why there is such a market at the moment for foreign wines," he said. German wines have long faced a bad rap abroad, often regarded as overly sweet. The German wine Black Tower was recently re-launched in the UK to great irony in the British press; they found the attempt to re-brand the wine nothing if not rather amusing. Nickenig wants a chance to change this image of the 2.4 million litres of German wine exported each year. Of course some German wines are sweet, but many are very dry as well. Due to the climate, our grapes produce wines which have very fruity aromas in the main, he said. Good year for German wine, a "good-value" The warm spring in Germany this year as well as a summer which lasted right into the end of September has meant vines have had longer than usual to ripen. The harvest has been better than the average annual yield of 10 million hectare litres according to wine experts. Im always very sceptical about it when producers start talking about good years, Nickenig told DW-WORLD, but the good weather has meant the grapes have a high sugar content and that basically means theyll make good wine. A good year for wine and better lobbying for producers might well be the mix that will save Germanys wine growers from extinction, although changing clichs about certain German wines might well prove more of a challenge. On that subject Joachim Basler wanted to make one thing clear. Black Tower and Liebfraumilch really arent that bad, you know, he said. And I wouldnt call them cheap; more good-value." DW.DE

Second-Rate Grapes? German Wines have a Bad Rap

German Vintners Feel Squeeze From New World Wines RIESLING FROM THE RHINELAND AND OTHER DIVINE DROPS 1 Discounter Aldi Pulls Top German Vintners Into Low-Cost Fold 2 German Vintners Feel Squeeze From New World Wines 3 EU Winemakers Likely to Be Asked to Dig Up Some Vines 4 Vintners Toast German Wine's Popularity 5 Family Winery Cultivates the Grape for 27 Generations 6 The Wines They Are A-Changin' 7 Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts 8 A Cycle Trip and Tipple Along the Moselle 9 Wrzburg: Where Drinking Wine Is Like Praying 10 Mainz: Modernity Meets Tradition 11 Koblenz: Good For Getting Over Jet Lag 12 Festivals in Germany for Wine Enthusiasts 13 At String of Summits, Merkel Ready to Serve The Finest Wine 14 Seaweed Wine Hits Germany's Stores 15 'Little Red Riding Hood' Sparkling Wine Flying High Germany has only a small share of the global wine market, but it is mighty. But up-andcoming wine-makers from surprising places, like China, are giving "Old World" winegrowers a run for their money. Growing grapes is a labor of love "Life is too short to drink bad wine," Germany's most famous poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, supposedly once said. Goethe, it should be noted, loved drinking his "grape juice" each evening. Like Goethe at the turn of the 19th century, more and more Germans are drinking wine these days -- and replacing the image of Germany as a beer-drinking nation. Even in the biggest markets in the world -- the United States and Japan, more people are sipping away at the nectar of the gods. German vintners have therefore been placing their bets on

one wine they do very well: Riesling. "Riesling continues to be our 'hot' wine," said Steffen Schindler, director of foreign marketing at the German Wine Institute (DWI) in Mainz. "We've seen that since the beginning of the 1990s, the selection of wines around the world has grown dramatically, so we've really had to carve a niche for ourselves." That niche coincides with changes in eating habits. "People are eating lighter, healthier meals," Schindler said. A light, fruity white wine suits such cuisine -- and that's where the popularity of German Riesling comes in. It fits the bill, according to Schindler. Tough competition It's all in the Riesling, say German wine exporters DWI is the national marketing organization for German wines. Wine shops and producers all contribute to DWI's budget -- much like a tax. The DWI decides how German wines are to be marketed on both domestic and foreign markets. The marketing methods are supplemented by winegrowers' own private advertising strategies. Obviously, part of developing marketing strategies is to know your competitor. While Europe still remains the world's biggest wine producer -- with Germany producing 3 percent of the world's wine, vino from so-called "New World" countries such as the United States, Argentina, Australia and Chile has become stiff competition for "Old World" -- or European -- winemakers. More and more wine is being cultivated in these countries. According to the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV), wines from such New World countries now have a 25.5 percent slice of the 80 billion-euro ($100 billion) global wine market. That market share was 1.6 percent 20 years ago. The European Union's five largest wine producers -- Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal -- have seen their portion decline from 75 to just over 62 percent in those two

decades, according to AFP news agency. At the same time, wine consumption in the strong wine-producing countries like France, Italy and Spain, has dropped in the past few years -- meaning that EU nations are producing more wine than they can sell. The European Commission has therefore called for a reform of wine cultivation and trade in EU-member states. "The plan aims to increase the competitiveness of EU wine producers, strengthen the reputation of EU wines and win back market share," the Commission said in a June statement. The idea is to reduce quantity and improve quality. To your health! How the grapes are cut from a vine is important German vintners say they can offer those quality wines. Luckily, a tasty Riesling can only be made in Germany, Schindler said. "We have a very particular climate here," he said. "Chardonnay vines -- which are probably the most popular sort right now -- can be cultivated virtually anywhere. That's not the case with GermanRiesling, or Silvaner, which only grow in the unique climate we have in the south and southwest part of the country." So, while German wine-makers are worried about tough competition from winemakers abroad, even from countries such as China -- which is now the world's seventh-largest producer of wine -- they are relying on the popularity and quality of Riesling -- not just for sales, but also to help them market other German wines abroad. Long wine-making history Vineyards along the Moselle river Still, one shouldn't underestimate

"surprise" wine-growing countries like China, says Alexander Margaritoff, CEO of Hawesko Holding AG, one of the world's largest sellers of wine. "The Chinese have been making wine for over 9,000 years," he said in an interview this month with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung paper, adding that the winegrowing regions of China lie along the same degree of latitude as Bordeaux, Tuscany and the Napa Valley. Even areas which have normally not been suited for wine cultivation in the past may be so in the future. Global warming is helping along countries such as Britain and even the Netherlands to make their mark in wine-making. New types of vines, too, are able to thrive in moderate, rainy climates, not just in sunny, warm ones. That means that other areas could potentially develop climates as "unique" as Germany's -- giving rise to more wine cultivators and therefore competitors. A "refined" Riesling Even nuns have their own Riesling vineyards along the Rhine For now, however, German wine producers are riding the wave of dramatic exports, which rose about 13 percent in the past 12 months. "The most dynamic market for us right now is the United States -- there, growth has been around 30 percent in the past year for German wine exports," Schindler said, "and that's mainly because ofRiesling." It is also an affordable wine: a good bottle starts at around $10 in the US; in Germany, the same costs around four and a half euros ($5.60), Schindler said. Perhaps one of biggest reasons for the growth of German wine exports, however, is a change in image. "In the 1990s, we used to try to 'educate' people abroad about German wine," Schindler said. "We explained everything from the 13 wine-growing regions here to the different types of grapes and their harvest times. "At some point, we realized that's all just too complicated for our foreign customers," Schindler said. "Most consumers just want to have fun -- they don't want lectures before

they start drinking a glass of wine." That's probably what good old Goethe thought, too -- even six feet under, his mouth may be watering for his favorite elixir.