In various restaurants along the Moselle (area of Traben-Trarbach), I noticed that wine lists are divided into chapters called "trocken", "halbtrocken", "lieblich", "edelsüsse Spezialitäten". All these categories are fairly clear to me, but occasionally one encounters "feinherb" as well.
Am I right in assuming that this is somewere between trocken and halbtrocken (kind of "vierteltrocken" or "dreivierteltrocken") or is it more complicated than that?
Thanks for your assistance
Yves
Hi That's a difficult one, actually, because there's no legal definition of the term, even when it's an allowed one. The glossary of the well informed German website wein-plus.de puts it between dry and semi-dry as Yves says, contrary to what I have seen and experienced myself in the Moselle... So even German experts seem to be confused. The "correct" answer is: Between semi-dry and moderately sweet (halbtrocken and lieblich). The residual sugar will then be 18-25 gr/l which fits well with various wine lists I've seen. The reason might be that sweet covers a large span from mild to cloying. A 'normal' Auslese would be anything between 18 to 60 gr/l and therefore there has been a need to tell whether a wine is not quite sweet.
term, even when it's an allowed one. The glossary of the well informed German website wein-plus.de puts it between dry and semi-dry as Yves says, contrary to what I have seen and experienced myself in the Moselle... So even German experts seem to be confused.
lieblich). The residual sugar will then be 18-25 gr/l which fits well with various wine lists I've seen.
'normal' Auslese would be anything between 18 to 60 gr/l and therefore there has been a need to tell whether a wine is not quite sweet.
Two additional explanations I have heard:
1) It is stylistically different from halbtrocken, rather than being sweeter or drier. I did not get a description of the style. 2) The term was invented because it sounds nicer than halbtrocken.Can't remember who told me number 1, but the source was reasonably authoritative or I would not have bothered to remember it.
Number 2 was from someone representing a well-respected Mosel producer at a tasting.
In view of all the confusion, and because my source had nothing to gain by the explanation (he was offering feinherb wines for tasting), I am tempted to believe my number 2!
"Anders Tørneskog" skrev i melding news:ECJZc.1269$ snipped-for-privacy@juliett.dax.net...
May I add that the word 'herb' actually does not originally describe any degree of taste but rather the mouth puckering effect of tannin which imho gets more noticeable with low sweetness. The meaning has later changed into a common description for wines with higher acidity and little residual sugar. Feinherb (finely 'herb') would then seem to connote a balanced wine with structure and some soothing sweetness to overcome a higher acidity. It seems that it will be very much up to the vintner when to use that description... hth Anders
Thanks for your advice, I guess that there's only one way to find out, i.e. learning by doing (=tasting)!
Yves
For still wines yes, but not for sparklers, where "herb" is the official term in German for "brut".
M.
Anders, I just noticed that you're munging your email address in a similar way to mine, but I want to suggest that you also munge the domain name. Right now, spammers are sending their mail to your ISP's servers, who have to bounce it. If you replace that valid domain name with something invalid (i2c.ten perhaps?), your own servers will receive no added traffic, and the spammers' server will be the only systems burdened (well, and whatever DNS server is queried for i2c.ten!)
Just my devalued USD 0.02, Mark Lipton
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