 Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Maddie Hauke. Hi, I'm Sherin Tan. Welcome back to the show today. We're gonna talk a little bit about German wines today. We just actually spent a month in the country visiting producers from all over. We're staying in the heart of the Rheinhessen, the biggest wine region in Germany, but we visited all the regions. It was a wonderful month in the country, right? We're tasting Riesling and Lodzsch-Petpern in Germany. So I have to admit, even as we're in the wine industry, we're tasting in and out, day out, all traveling, all the time, but I think Germany is one of the world's great wine producing countries, but it's also one of those countries that I know very little about professionally when you're comparing to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal. What about you? Riesling, specifically Moser Riesling was one of the first few white wines that I really appreciate, but just like you as well. I think there was just something intimidating about German wine that deters me from exploring more. And I think it's the label, right? If you're not familiar with the label, the label can be confusing. You have to stay tuned. I'm working on a video to try to simplify the labels as much as possible. So you have to stay tuned for that. But when you talk about German wine, you have to talk about Riesling, the king of grapes, right? Yeah, with his razor shop acidity, light body, refreshing palette. Almost every region does produce Riesling. And we visited producers in the Mosel, the R, Franken, Franconia also, the Rheinghausen, Rheingau, Naha, fault, the faults, and the Rheinghausen. Did I say the Rheinghausen? So we went all over the place. What are some styles or what are some things that you liked when you were comparing and contrasting the regions? In my opinion, I think that the different regions really bring about very different profile to the Rheinghausen. Of course, it's based on quite a limited number of producers that we taste from each region, right? For Mosel, I always appreciate the more mineral-driven, lighter, body-style Rheinghausen. Whereas for the faults, I always appreciate it to be more fruity, maybe a little bit higher in alcohol, a little bit more generous structure, but more round, when it comes to sort of wrestling. Rheingau, I've always known it as much more of a structure, muscle kind of wrestling, but that's about all that I knew, and I always liked the faults one a little bit more because it's more accessible. But after this trip, which really brought my attention to Naha, which I think that's one of my favorite wrestling producing regions. For me, I, you know, there's so much talk about the distinctions and the different resins to the different sites we were tasting from a lot of grand crew, premier crews, a lot of different regions. For me, the only style that I could really get my finger, my hands around, or the faults is obviously the faults is bigger, has more fruit, and the Naha, what you talked about. Naha has the fruit, but still has the razor sharp acidity, but it's not overly fat, like some of the wines from the faults can be. Mosel, okay, they can be slady, but I thought the Naha and the faults were the most distinctive for me. I think it also has to do with, besides often what people talk about terroir, right? Also, it has to do with the producer's style, signature. It has to do with the vinification method as well. And what you pointed out was, like for faults, it's quite easy to identify because the wines or the grapes from that region tend to have higher pH and quite a handful of producers don't try to stop malolectic. So some of the reasoning actually went through malolectic, and you can imagine the malolectic style kind of a wrestling, even just a little bit compared to the Mosel, Precise, like no malolectic high acidity sort of lip wrestling, they are very clearly distinct difference, even to, I would say, even to quite a casual palette. Yeah, for people that don't know that like wrinkly, these things have this opinion that these things are sweet, simple wines. That's not the case, you know, Germany producers are very passionate about recently making these bone dry, intense wines, a lot of stone fruit, lime, lemony acidity, a lot of minerals, and they just go great with all types of food, right? Yeah, I think classically, wrestling cabinet really built a reputation for German wrestling, right? Which often when you have a great reputation, it goes both ways. So even for me as well, I believe my first taste of wrestling was a Fritz Hart cabinet from Mosel. So again, that sets impression for people about what wrestling is about. I think also to a second point, right, I learned to realize that even when we talk about dry wrestling, no matter how dry they are, most of the producers actually have a little bit of residue sugar in their wrestling, sometimes like five, seven, eight grams, but it shouldn't be pronounced to the palette because it really just helps to balance out the acidity which is really high, but there are various reasons why people think they're wrestling their sweet. Also the flavor, the flavor when you smell it sometimes because of the honey flavor, it's very easy to fool people and to believe that it's a sweet wine. It's intense, it really can be really intense. And I'm glad you touched on it. Talk about some styles that really impressed us, some wines that really impressed us. Obviously we tasted some of the greatest producers which was great, but cabinet, I found that I really like it. And we're talking about sweet cabinet because you can have dry cabinet, but I really like cabinets or usually around 40 grams. Go on. But any grams that we do is residual sugar. You've always been a cabinet fan. No, not really actually. I started drinking cabinet when I was really quite a teenager but I grew kind of out of it. But for me that's, it was just my impression. If I want to drink a Moser wrestling, I always think about cabinet because it's just so easy to drink like you said, at the sugar level with great acidity, very refreshing and it's usually very light, like 10%? Yeah. 8% So it's really dangerous when you put it in front of you, it's like juice. Oh is it? And you know, these wines usually about 40 grams a liter of residual sugar that sounds like a lot, but with the super high acidity, they still taste fairly dry. What's great is a lot of producers are passionate about cabinets, so they're making them with fruit from Premier Crew, Grand Crew Vineyards. This is not some standard fruit. Just the juiciness, the sweetness, the lemony type of city, the citrusness, the minerals. Oh, it goes well even with meat, right? It goes well in different types of food. There are just so many things that's so amazing about wrestling, right? Again, if you go back to sweetness, one thing is that a lot of people, it comes off as so sweet because of the aromas but they achieve it with so little residual sugar and then yet at the same time, it tastes so balanced and dry even though it has some residual sugar. So I think that's all this contradiction, dichotomy about wrestling that makes it so... The next is, you know what? German Pinot Noirs have been giving tons of press lately. There's an article in four, I don't think it was four, it said Germany might be producing the best Pinot Noir in the world right now. We're in Germany called Speitberger, late-ripenning burgundy. We found some really good examples, right? Absolutely. Actually, recently when I was in Switzerland for the Mondale du Pinot's event, I rated a couple of wines with a gold medal. I awarded them with a gold medal and upon looking at the result, actually it turned out that quite a couple of the Pinot's got like an actually Speitberger neck. Speitberger, you find them because it's the most planted red wine grape in Germany. You know, as far north as Germany is actually 40% of the production is red wine, weirdly enough. But, you know, you have everything from very simple Speitberger's three euros all the way up to examples where it tastes 99, 99, 100, probably even more. And you can find quite a range in quality, right? Yeah, it's quite interesting today, right? Not a ton of drinkers talk about Germany being a Pinot Noir producing country because it's in fact the third biggest Pinot Noir producing countries in the world. And you really, like you said, you can find so many different styles of wine, so many different styles of Pinot Noir in Germany. What I appreciate, as you said as well, because of the price point, usually for most of the countries, I'm quite picky, so even for like the range of like 20 to 30 euros, right? There are a lot of Pinot Noirs that I just don't appreciate. I don't like to drink. It's one-dimensional. It's like too burnt, it's too hot. It's just something I would pick on it. And I become the kind of person you don't want to be friends with. But when it comes to being in Germany, there were in fact quite a couple of 10 euros. Even the cheapest bottle that I bought was 8.99, 9.99 euros. Fred, yeah, it was awesome. It was quite a different profile. You would expect a little bit of this, like, slight hint of paprika spice, wild strawberry for the usually the entry-level Pinot Noir. But what I love about it is most of them, they are not freaking burnt. You still get your nice aromatic compounds, very soft, very layered notes of Pinot Noir on the nose. You know, I thought when you're talking about mid-range and under-shave burger, it has this distinct profile. When you start to get in the 20, the 30, up to 100-year range, the wines are very, can be very burgundy, I think. Yeah, yeah, I would sometimes, sometimes not just burgundy as well, I think of it as the 90s, 70s, Napa... Napa cap. I know it's a very strange comparison, but if you're familiar with the 70s Napa Cabinet, right? It was a time when the alcohol was like dull back to like 13, 12% alcohol, super green acidity, light body. But when it ages, if you drink those Napa cap today, it has that sort of silkiness, that sort of light, ethereal, back spine that you find in Pinot Noir. And in fact, I do find it in some of the top-range fake burgundy, and I was just, I was blown away. I mean, I literally almost cried when I tasted one of my favorites fake burgundy, because it was like traveling back in time to somewhere in the past in burgundy that I don't know about. I mean, we tasted some excellent from John Stodden and they are some amazing wines from Rudolph first. And I'm talking amazing when I put my tasting notes back in 96, 97 point type of wines, right? So there's some, there are some truth there. There's some beautiful German fake burgunders out there. I mean, for wines, maybe it's different for some people as well, but for me, often they are good, very good, excellent wine, right? And then there's just this category of ethereal wine where you just, I'm lost for words. Okay, 99 points, 98 points. And lastly, we're going to talk about price. And you know what? I was just astounded by the quality of wines you're getting at relatively low prices, especially as it pertains to white wine and more especially Riesling. You were getting some outstanding Rieslings that you were buying there on the shelf, seven to eight euros. Of course, the grossest give-offs, the Grand Crew wines, they go up to, you know, they were 35 to 70, 80 euros, even more a bottle. But I found in anywhere from the low range to the village level, to the Premier Crew, the Erste Lager, you fantastic wines for anywhere from the 12 to 25-year-old price range on the shelf. So I think that we're only about two times in our travel lives that we say we're living and drinking very well. So once was in Hungary and then in Germany was the second time. Sure, like Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, all of those countries that we love, they make great wines as well, but we're talking on a daily basis. How many, how many value for money wines can you get and what is the diversity? We could be drinking like great value for money wine for a whole two months and drink a different bottle every day in Germany or much more than that. So it's incredible how great value, what kind of quality, the diversity, the money, oh, everything you can get in German wine, you know I'm crazy about it. Especially when you consider the fact that the country is expensive, labor is expensive, the slopes are really, really steep. That's one thing I didn't mention as well. You know, you think of, when you think of health side venues, think of Italy a lot of times, but man, in Germany, they're so precise, they're so steep, it's really some impressive stuff. So Germany, I will be looking forward to going back. I'm a German wine fan, a Rieslinger-Schwaetbergen fan for life now. Ha ha, in fact we'll be going back to Germany to discover a little bit more this winter, so. You have to stay tuned to that, you know, I'll put some links, we wrote some articles, did some videos about German wine. If they're out by this time of the video, I'll put them in the description box. Check out some of these wines, go out and drink them. Germany, man, fantastic, fantastic stuff. So guys, if you like this video. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Exactly, we're on channel, I will see you. At a next episode, bye.