Weird Wednesday Winefest
The poor guy never saw it coming
This story centres on a wine-tasting event featuring German wines, so here is some background for context.
One of the most important and salient aspects of German wine, at least to Germans who drink wine, is the level of sweetness it presents. In fact, for German wines that rise past the level of “table wine,” it’s all about sweetness. It’s not that Germans all want a sweet wine, but they judge, more or less, their wines based on how sweet they are.
There are five designations for sweetness in German wines and they are related, largely, to how long the grapes that are used to make them remain on the vines before harvest, and the manner in which they are harvested.
As you climb the sweetness ladder, the cost of the wines generally increases as well. I’ve listed a price for each level — but they are just pulled off of the first wine website on which I found German wines for sale and I show the lowest-priced wine at each level.
The least sweet option is called Kabinett (which means just what it sounds like). Kabinett wines are made with grapes that are fully ripened. Cost: €21
On the next rung of the sweetness ladder is Spätlese, which means “late harvest.” As you might expect given these are German wines, “late” is often just a week after the normal harvesting period.
If the Italians had such a designation for their wine harvested a week or so “late” it would be called “la raccolta ha richiesto più tempo del previsto,” which translates to “the harvest took longer than anticipated…”
The equivalent for Italian wines is, “The harvest took longer than we thought…”
While on the sweet side, Spätlese wines are often just fuller-bodied than those designated as Kabinett. Cost: €26
We reach appreciable sweetness with the wines called Auslese. Auslese means “select harvest.” For these wines, the harvester (a real person, not a machine) selects specific bunches of grapes— many of which will have a fungus on them called “noble rot.” I suppose they call it noble rot because “grape fungus” is even less appealing. The fungus sucks some of the moisture out of the grapes, leaving a higher concentration of sugar inside. Cost: €33
Now we get the rare stuff — Beerenauslese. We know “auslese” mean select harvest, where they are picking specific bunches of grapes with the fung… er… noble rot. Well, Beeren means berries — so with Beerenauslese, people go through and pick individual grapes with noble rot on them. These wines are sweet enough to be served as dessert wines. Cost: €54
The pinnacle of sweetness is the wines called Trochenbeerenauslese. Trochen means dried. For these wines, selected grapes that have turned into raisins (or almost to that point) on the vine are picked. The concentrated sweetness of the fruit (think how much sweeter a raisin is versus a normal grape) produces a delicious dessert wine. Cost: €110
There is one other type of German wine that must, by German law, have the sweetness level of a Beerenauslese, called Eiswein (ice wine). It’s called Eiswein because sometimes there is an early frost in the vineyards and the grapes literally freeze. When this happens, and it doesn’t always, the grapes are harvested while frozen and immediately crushed. The result is a wine with an explosive, fresh taste. Cost: €170
With our wine lesson complete we can move on to the wine fest!
I used to work in a liquor store, in Buffalo, NY, that had a big selection of imported wines. This was back in the 1970s when imported wines were just becoming a thing. I worked in the Imported Wine Room of this store and so, when Burt, the effective owner of the store had a wine fest, I along with my Wine Room colleagues, were wrangled to help serve the wine he was presenting.
The party was for his top customers — many of whom spent upwards of $10,000 per year at the store. The reason for the party was that Burt found a source of relatively inexpensive German dessert wines: These Beerenauslese and Trochenbeerenauslese level wines were about half the price they typically were found at.
So, Burt threw a big party at his home and had 10 or 15 of these German dessert wines on hand for tasting. He also had the event catered by a local bakery. The house was filled with every cake, pie and strudel imaginable.
The only thing missing was the guests!
Okay, some guests showed up, but he had invited over 100 people and only about 20 showed up. Burt was beside himself — he feared he had done something to offend his top customers!
While sharing his angst with me, I mentioned that to me it made sense as it was Ash Wednesday.
“What’s Ash Wednesday,” Burt asked. Burt is Jewish and, at the time, had no idea what Ash Wednesday was.
I replied “You know how Fat Tuesday and Carnival/Mardi Gras are the lead-in to the Catholic season of Lent? Well for Lent, people usually give up something — like candy or dessert or drinking.” Burt nods along showing he’s listening. “Well,” I continued, “today is the first day of that period. And while most people don’t go the whole 40 days of Lent passing up the things they said they would, they at least give them up on the first day — i.e., Ash Wednesday.”
He was crestfallen.
When all the guests had gone, Burt thanked us with the tasting of a special sweet French wine — a 1966 Château d’Yquem, Sauternes. The grapes at Château d’Yquem “suffer” from the same noble rot that the German grapes get, which gives sauternes its sweetness. Just to contrast the cost of this gem versus the German wines, a bottle of 2009 Château d’Yquem (a wine as relatively old as the one we tasted after the party) sells for $750. Plus we each got a cake to take home for later.
In a word, SWEET!
Thank you for reading this article — hopefully you found it interesting!
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