Tomorrow I intend to visit the yearly wine festival in Besigheim. I say
"yearly", but it's actually the first festival since the Corona pandemic,
so it's going to be a special occasion. The people of Besigheim are proud of
their wine. Germany makes the best wines in the world. That might come as a
surprise to wine lovers in England, because Germany hardly exports any wine.
In fact, when it comes to wine Germans look down on England. They say that
the English don't understand wine, so Germans drink the best wine themselves and
export the rubbish to England.
There are 13 wine growing areas in Germany. The opinions on the relative
quality are biased. There are distinct differences in taste, and people in
each area say their own wine is the best. Call me biased, but I'm
convinced that Württemberg wines are the best. That's what my work colleagues
told me when I first moved to Stuttgart, and over time I began to agree with
them. One thing I was told is that when you're invited to someone's home you
should give them a bottle of wine, but only Württemberg wine. If you give him
a bottle of French wine he'll be insulted.
The people of Besigheim say their wine is the best wine in Württemberg, i.e.
the best wine in the world. I enjoy the Besigheimer wines, and I've drunk a
lot of them, but I have to disagree. I prefer the wine from the Heilbronn
area.
Today I've been drinking a Besigheimer wine, the Cabernet Dorsa. It's a new
wine to me. It was created in Württemberg in 1971 as a cross of the grapes
Lemberger and Dornfelder, but it wasn't recognised as a new variety until
2004. Since then it's been rapidly growing in popularity, planted in vineyards
across Germany. Surprisingly, the majority of Cabernet Dorsa grapes are grown
in the Pfalz (Palatinate), 78 hectares (193 acres), compared with only 29
hectares (72 acres) in Württemberg. It would be interesting to compare them.
This is a map of the wine-growing areas in Germany. The largest areas are:
Rheinhessen (26,685 hectares)
Pfalz (22,885 hectares)
Baden (15,429 hectares)
Württemberg (11,140 hectares)
Mosel (8,594 hectares)
I'll let you convert the hectares into acres yourself. Multiply by 2.5.
I mentioned above that the Cabernet Dorsa is a cross between Lemberger and
Dornfelder grapes. I greatly enjoy Lemberger wines for their fruity flavour,
but I find Dornfelder wines harsh and unpalatable. However, the mixture of
the two grapes has produced an astoundingly powerful taste. If I were a wine
expert I would be able to describe it better. All I can say is that it's very
fruity, even more so than Lemberger. It lacks the subtlety of Lemberger, so I
suspect that Carnet Dorsa is a wine to drink in larger quantities. I haven't
tried it yet. I don't like to get drunk, but I could at least drink a few glasses
to get an impression.
Addendum on Monday, 18th September 2023
I've received an email from a friend who strongly disagrees that the
Württemberg wines are the best. He insists that the Mosel wines are the best.
He claims that the Württemberg wines are too dry.
As you might expect, my friend lives in the Mosel wine area, to be precise in
Trier. I wrote in the second paragraph that everyone is biased and calls his
own wine the best, so why don't I just brush off his criticism?
I've drunk a few Mosel wines, admittedly not many, but they made a good
impression on me. It's true that they're sweet, but not too sweet. The German
word is lieblich, which means pleasant. I make no secret of the fact that I
prefer dry wines. However, if you're a person who prefers sweeter wines, the
Mosel wines are the ones for you. They're not bad wines. They're better than
the Rhein-Hessen wines, which are also sweet. I still disagree with my friend,
but I'll qualify the statement I made in my main article:
Württemberg wine is the best in Germany, but Mosel wine is the best sweet wine
in Germany.
Does that make you happy?
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