Some questions about german wines

skrev i melding news:1f90$41460a61$459f8f35$ snipped-for-privacy@nf1.news-service-com...

The immediate answer is: Marketing. But there is reality behind it - any producer may mark his best batches in some way. Some will use a star system **, ***, and even **** stars may be seen. Others will use a golden capsule for their premium wines or a long golden one for extra premium wines. Your quote simply says "Riesling late harvest, barrel no 15" which would be supposed to be better than the other barrels in some way.. Yes, for a given producer they are better (read: expensiver) wines, but the neighbour next door may have even better wines without marking them so... as there is no regulation for this sort of marketing gimmick. Besides, your taste may be different. I've at times found a ** wine 'better' than a monster **** one. :-) Anders

Many make several batches of, say, an auslese wine. Before 1971, they could put the German equivalent of "fine" or "best" on the label along with auslese, but the 1971 German wine laws put an end to this. Thus some better growers use various capsule size and color codes, etc, to indicate which are the better and best batches. For example you sometimes, find a regular capsule, a gold capsule, and a long gold capsule for a J. J. Prüm auslese. The long gold capsule wine usually is far better than the regular capsule and somewhat better than the gold capsule. A long gold capsule wine will cost much more than the plain capsule wine. Some estates use different label designs to indicate the better wines. For instance, Schloss Johannisberg had a regular label and another with a picture of the Schloss for the better grade. Several other schemes have been used to get around the ban against nonofficial quality descriptions on the label. The reason for the 1971 ban was that some makers of cheap wine were making such things as "best" Liebfraumilch which was only a mass produced cheap blend.

My mailbox is always full to avoid spam. To contact me, erase snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net from my email address. Then add snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com . I do not check this box every day, so post if you need a quick response.