Derek Scallymakes a pitch for German wines - give them another chance, he urges, after a trip to the spectacular Mosel Valley
Trends come and trends go, but one regrettable constant in Irish life - embarrassing, even, for those of us who live in Germany - is the way off- licences and supermarkets still inflict Blue Nun and Black Tower on their customers. The fact is, German wines are better than ever - as you'll find if you take a trip through the Mosel Valley, where you can experience the rebirth of Riesling, the saviour of the country's wine industry.
More than 140 grape varieties are planted in German vineyards, which stretch from Baden, in the southwest, to Dresden, in the east. A quarter of all production is Riesling, which thrives in the slate soil and mild climate of the Mosel Valley to produce white wines with a unique mineral content.
"Riesling has four faces: trocken [ dry], feinherb [ tart] and the sweet restsüss and edelsüss," says Christoph Tyrell, one of the Mosel's most celebrated producers. "The sweet wines are relatively well known but the first two, lesser so. The classic dry can be used to accompany many more meals, and gradually people are realising that."
The classic tour begins in the city of Koblenz, near Frankfurt, and takes you kilometre after lazy kilometre down the Mosel River, flanked by some of the steepest vineyards you're ever likely to see. Come in early summer and you can join in the excitement as the new wines are opened. Travel through the region in harvest season, in September, and you'll see families picking the grapes by hand. At any time of the year, a holiday in the region is incredibly good value. You'll get the simplest and most authentic accommodation by staying as guests of wine producers in their Weingut, or estate. Producers are only too happy to organise on-the-spot tastings for their guests or for passers-by. Wine from small estates is likely to be fair to good - they produce wine around here the way Irish farmers produce milk - but you could turn up a tasty secret or two.
It's simple to get to the Mosel Valley (see panel below), and, once you're there, you have a number of options to get around. If you have time on your hands, you can can cruise the river. Cyclists will be in heaven, thanks to the seemingly endless riverside cycle lanes. This being Germany, you can forget the car and take the trains that run alongside the river up to four times an hour.
The valley is filled with hidden delights; a must-see is Burg Eltz. Hidden in a forest, the 850-year-old castle looks like a laddish version of mad King Ludwig's Neu-Schwanstein, the model for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beautycastle. It is one of the few intact original structures remaining in the Mosel region and the only one in Germany still owned by the family that built it. You can take a tour through dozens of its rooms, from the armoury to the banqueting hall, all filled with original furnishings and decor.
The pretty towns of Bernkastel-Kues and Cochem, with half-timbered houses straight out of Hansel and Gretel, are perfect for a day trip of shopping and wine tastings. Buy a few boxes of your favourite Rieslings or Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), then head home on the train, letting someone else do the driving.
Look all you like, but nowhere in the Mosel Valley will you find even one bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower, brands that some people unfairly associate with the wine scandal of 20 years ago. Less scrupulous producers in Austria, Germany and Italy were caught sweetening their wines with forms of glycol, a component of antifreeze that can cause cramps and diarrhoea as well as kidney, liver and brain damage. The equivalent of about 35 million bottles of wine was destroyed - and, with it, the reputation of German wine.
Few producers represent the fall and resurrection of the country's wine industry better than the Karthäuserhof, outside Trier. Wine was first produced here in the first century; after 1335, it was made by the Carthusian monks who founded the Karthäuserhof. Secularisation, in 1811, brought the vineyards into the hands of the Rautenstrauch family, who continue to run it today, in the sixth generation. In 1985, after 600 years, the business faced almost certain ruin when Werner Tyrell, its owner, was charged as part of the glycol scandal.
His son Christoph, who took over the business and went for a new start with the 1986 harvest, says: "I was a lawyer at the time, and I told myself: 'I am committed to the family inheritance, and, even if it has taken a slide, I have to turn it around. I am known negatively now, I have to turn that around into something positive' " Today, Karthäuserhof is one of Germany's prize-winning estates, and Tyrell was recently named producer of the year by one of the country's leading wine guides.
Karthäuserhof, which is open to visitors, is probably one of Germany's most beautiful wine estates, with vaulted cellars and a stunning tasting room of dark wood and blue-and-white tiles.
It is also one of the most self-contained estates: grapes from the surrounding vineyards go in at one end of the white production building and emerge from the other in sleek green bottles with Karthäuserhof's distinctive bow label.
"Wine inspectors are out here regularly taking samples. We have more inspectors in Germany today than anywhere else in the world, including France and Italy," says the cellar master.
Rather than go for quantity, the estate produces a maximum of 8,000 bottles of 15 varieties. As at many estates in the region, a Kartäuserhof speciality is Eiswein, a sweet white wine made from frozen grapes. "Last year on Christmas night we got the call that it was minus-eight degrees, and we headed out the next morning at 6am to harvest," says Nico, a trainee, laughing.
From the Karthäuserhof, it's a short trip into the city of Trier, founded in 16BC as Roma Secunda, a second Rome and the capital of the West Roman empire. Roman ruins are everywhere in the city, from the 30,000-seater amphitheatre to the thermal baths and the Porta Nigra, the north gate in the Roman city wall.
Trier has probably the world's oldest wine cellar, the Vereinigte Hospizen, from 500AD, which is open to the public. Also worth a visit is the birth house of Trier's most famous son, Karl Marx. Then pop across the road to the Weinhaus, where Otti Büsching offers more than 500 German wines. You can fill in any blanks from the Mosel trip, restock any favourites emptied on the journey or even make a brief liquid detour to Germany's other wine regions. All bottles are sold at vineyard prices, and Büsching is happy to accept orders big and small and ship them to Ireland.
Europeans are only just catching on, but the Riesling renaissance is already well under way across the Atlantic, where US sales jumped by 20 per cent in 2005, aided by glowing praise from the New York Timeswine critic, among others. German wine exports were worth €475 million in 2005, 10 per cent more than the previous year and the most since the scandal of 1985.
Still, German producers remain a cautious lot when it comes to pushing their product, even though critics have praised them for producing much better-value wines than other countries.
"The only area where we Germans get the marketing right is with our cars," says Tyrell, laughing, a day after his 2005 Riesling was voted one of Germany's top three dry whites by the country's leading food and wine magazine.
But word of mouth is spreading. Perhaps even Ireland will finally banish Blue Nun from its shelves.
Karthäuserhof 2005 Riesling Auslese "S" trocken 2004, as well as other German Rieslings, is available from Karwig Wines (www.karwigwines.ie, 021-4372864), among other outlets in Ireland
BLUFF YOUR WAY THROUGH GERMAN WINE
No other country divides its wine into as many levels of quality. At the bottom is Tafelweinand Landwein, normally made by small producers from just one region, using a mixture of grape varieties.
Up a level is QbA, or Qualitätswein, the largest classification, with tighter controls on the varieties and origins of the grapes.
At the top of the wine pyramid are the Prädikatswein, which increase in order of quality.
Kabinettrefers to fine light wines, from ripe grapes, with a low alcohol content. Spätleseis harvested later, with riper, finer grapes. Ausleserefers to full-bodied wine from fine, sorted grapes.
Beerenausleseis full, concentrated, fruity and sweet. Eisweinis a rarity, combining sweet and sour flavours and produced from the crushed fruit concentrate of frozen grapes.
At the top of the heap is Trockenbeerenauslese, made from raisin-like grapes; it is often sweet and honey-like.
If you visit the Mosel during September, make sure to try Federweisse. It is still closer to grape juice than wine, so it tastes like Lilt with an alcoholic kick. The red equivalent, which tastes like grown-up Ribena, is Roter Sauser.
PLANNING YOUR TRIP
The region's website, www.mosel.de, should help you find accommodation and plan sightseeing. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies daily from Dublin and Kerry to Hahn airport (nowhere near Frankfurt, whatever the airline claims), a few kilometres from the Mosel Valley. For more about German wine, try www.deutscheweine.de and www.karthaeuserhof.de. The Weinhaus is at 7 Brückenstrasse, Trier (00-49-651-1704924)