Bryan Collins
Posts: 2355
Joined: 7/14/2006
From: Bedfordshire, UK
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Everything that matters is riesling. Ok, there are a few really good dessert wines made from like likes of scheurebe or even huxelrebe, but riesling is where we're at. Don't even go there with the pinot noir thing (some Germans sure to disagree...)
"Basic" wine is often labelled QbA - Qualitatswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete - this'll be cheap but from good growers it can be very tasty. Think basic Bourgogne from a good Burgundy producer, or a Cotes du Rhone from someone who also makes Chateauneuf or Hermitage.
The real stuff is (or used to be) called QmP - Qualitatswein mit Pradikat. Now it's just called Pradikatswein. Within Pradikatswein, there are five levels. In increasing level of sugar in the base juice, these are Kabinett, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese. Typically, all of these will be somewhat sweet, from off-dry Kabinetts to full-on dessert wines for the BAs and TBAs. None of these wines will be dry unless they are desigated "trocken" (meaning dry). Kabinetts and Spatlesen can be so designated. Auslesen trockens can sometimes be seen too, but less commonly. BAs and TBAs are always sweet. Don't let the "trocken" in Trockenbeerenauslese confuse you - this just means the grapes themselves were dry, ie dried out from noble rot. These are intensely sweet.
The very best dry wines, in the last couple of years, have been labelled Grosses Gewachs (or Erstes Gewachs in the Rheingau). These are wines from top vineyards with sugar levels equivalent to at least Spatlesen but more usually Auslesen, but where the sugar is fully fermented to alcohol (or as fully as possible). Thus the wines are both dry, and higher in alcohol than typical for German wines. Somewhat similar in concept to Austrian "Smaragd" wines from the Wachau.
Then you've got Eisweins - very late harvested grapes (around Christmas, often) where concentration is achieved by freezing the water within the grapes while they are still on the vine (compare with noble rot, where concentration is achieved by botrytis cinerea mould which dessicates the grapes). Eisweins tend to be very pure with little or no botrytis character, whereas BAs and TBAs are usually botrytised and show the honey and marmalade characters you would expect.
There are other confusions. Most famously, traditional sweet Auslese wines (ie not Grosses Gewachs, or what used to be called trockens). In the old days, there was considerable subdivision within the Auslese category, so a grower could differentiate between the great wines and the merely good. Auslese used to be graded, from low to high, as feine, feinste and hochfeine - these terms weren't officially defined and were up to the winery to use. They've long since been banned, but many wineries didn't like not being able to differentiate between their Auslesen - so they started using a gold capsule for their best wines. These came to be known as Goldkapsel wines, although nothing on the label gave them away. Some producers even make both Goldkapsel (GK) wines ang Langgoldkapsel (LGK) wines - the latter being their very best Auslesen, with, you guessed it, a long gold capsule. JJ Prum, for example, makes it easier to tell which is which by putting a white stripe on the capsule of his GK wines and two white stripes on his LGK wines. These are monumental and magnificent. If you ever get any, open them with me around.
There's lots more to it, but I need my bed now, as Alexandra has decided to sleep at last.
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German wines - an idiots guide someone please - 
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