WINE Grape Pretenders

Despite the current vogue for bone-dry wine, German wines are more popular than ever. Contrary to misconception, they are not all sweet, though they must exhibit a fresh, fruity flavor to be typical. I won’t re-hash the old Kabinett-Spǎtlese-Auslese routine for you, since this can be found in any wine book; still, certain bits of information are helpful. If a wine label carries the word “Qualitǎtswein” (or Q.b.A) alone, then that wine is sugared during fermentation to sweeten it and raise the alcohol content. If the words “mit PrǎSdikat” (meaning with special attributes) are attached, then the wine is a natural product. For the highest quality, look for the word Riesling; the best German wines are made from this noble grape. Most of the new plantings are done with inferior varieties, and one can no longer assume that a German wine is a Riesling product. Also, read up on the difference between Grosslage (a large area of pedestrian quality) and Einzellage (a single vineyard site). For example, Piesporter Goldtrǒpfchen (an Einzel1 age) comes from a well-situated plot of land behind the village; Piesporter Michelsberg (a Grosslage) comes from an area that extends for miles up and down the river. Confusingly, both are called Piesporter, but only the first actually comes from that town. As for vintages, 1975 and 1976 were great years; 1977 and 1978, mundane.

In March, I had occasion to meet and taste wines with a German winegrower from Zeltingen, a village located in the heart of the best section of the Mosel River valley. Joachim Ehses-Hansen was vacationing in Dallas at the invitation of Bill Stowe and Ron Poole, whose wholesale firm, Arwood Stowe, Inc., is the only importer of his wines in America. The Ehses-Hansen family has been tending vines in Zeltingen for some 350 years. Today, 29-year-old Joachim manages the business while his father, mayor of the town of 3000, remains in an advisory role. The young Ehses-Hansen is a bright, affable man with Teutonic cool and precise-ness. His family owns some of the best vineyard property in Zeltingen, which is at one end of a stunning five-mile wall of vines that also includes the famous villages of Wehlen, Graach, and Bernkastel.

The purpose of my meeting with the German vintner was twofold: First, I wanted an inside look at the wine trade from the grower’s angle, which is, after all, where it all begins. Also, we both had been invited to examine some wines that were being offered to the Stowe firm for distribution in Texas. Stowe had refused to buy the wines after deciding the liquid contents did not correspond to the names on the labels. We compared one of the suspect wines, a 1975 Zeltinger Schloss-berg Spǎtlese, with a bottle from the same vineyard, same year, produced by our guest. The Ehses-Hansen wine was superb: golden and fresh, with elusive flavors of peaches and apricots – a typically fine Mosel of anexcellent vintage. Its imitatorwas a mockery. Showing noneof the other wine’s complexities, the bogus bottle was thin,, pale, and sugary sweet. It wasat this juncture that my discussion with Joachim Ehses-Hansen began:

Spurr: How do you know this wine is not what it claims to be?

Ehses-Hansen: Several reasons. First of all, the bouquet is very dirty and definitely not that of a wine made from the Riesling grape. The Schloss-berg vineyard is very precious – one of the Mosel’s best -so only the Riesling is plantedthere. 1 have been drinkingMosel wine all my life, and Iknow what it is supposed tosmell and taste like. This wineis, I think, made from the Bacchus grape, which has beenplanted in poor areas such asside valleys and flat ground. Itmakes a large quantity butpoor quality. One barrel ofwine from the Bacchus willstink up an entire cellar. Thevines are being uprooted nowand replaced with better varieties. Also, the color is much too pale for a Spǎtlese quality wine of 1975. Obviously, it tastes nothing like what it says it is.

Spurr: The label states that the wine is made from property belonging to someone named Jakoby. Do you recognize that name?

Ehses-Hansen: I know everyone who owns a part of the Schlossberg vineyard, and I have never heard of a Jakoby there. I will check on this when I return to Germany.

Spurr: The idea of fraudulent practices is a very touchy subject. In fact, you are one of the few people I’ve met who will even talk about it.

Ehses-Hansen: This is true. There are people who cheat in every country that makes wine. I do not want people to stop buying wine because they are afraid of fakes. Most wines are authentic, and it is our duty to protect this integrity.

Spurr: What type of fraudulent activity goes on?

Ehses-Hansen: Mostly – in my country – the blending of cheap Italian or Austrian wine with German wine to stretch the quantity.

Spurr: Doesn’t the German government have strict controls to prevent that sort of thing?

Ehses-Hansen: Yes, but once the wine leaves our borders, we can’t control what happens to it. Much wine is shipped in barrels to ports like Rotterdam. There it can be tampered with and shipped overseas without fear of penalty from the country of origin.

zSpurr: What does the government do when it catches someone cheating?

Ehses-Hansen: Usually a fine, but the punishment is not severe enough. For instance, if someone is caught, he may be fined, oh, 6000 marks. But he has already made perhaps 40,000 marks. So, the penalty is not strong enough to make him stop. I know of one firm, Arnold Brosch, that was found blending foreign wines and selling them as German, but I notice these wines are still on the market. There have been other instances, too, but it is not really a widespread thing.

Spurr: What can be done to avoid this situation?

Ehses-Hansen: The customer should not buy wines that look suspicious – buy only from reputable growers and shippers. The wholesaler and retailer can also help keep bad wines from going to the public.

Spurr: What are some of the obstacles facing a wine grower these days?

Ehses-Hansen: Of course, the cost of making wine is always going up. The walls of the Mosel valley are so steep that it is almost impossible to use machinery. Manual labor is becoming harder to find and very expensive. Materials are also more costly. The weather in Germany is another problem because we are so far north. Now we have had two not-so-good vintages in a row. It costs as much to make wine in a bad year as it does in a good one, but the wine does not bring the same price. There is also the problem of interference from the government. Your country now requires a new metric size for all imported bottles. That means I must now have one size bottle for wines I sell in Germany and another size for ones I send to the U.S.A. It is very confusing.

Spurr: Piesporter has become the most popular Mosel wine. Like Pouilly-Fuissé in France, is there really enough to supply the world demand?

Ehses-Hansen: No. In fact, I recently went to Piesport – where I know all the growers – and tried to buy some Pies-porter Goldtrǒpfchen Kabinett 1978 to ship to Texas. Since 1978 was not a very good year, only a few growers were able to produce a wine of this quality level, and they were selling it under their own name. So, I could not buy any and neither could anyone else. But now I see many cases of this wine being sent to the USA under different labels, so who knows. They are probably wines from neighboring villages, less famous names being sold as Piesporter. This is not so bad because the wines from these towns are usually of the same quality.

Spurr: How do you rate the Rieslings grown in California?

Ehses-Hansen: They are very good, but not like the German Rieslings. I can compare them to wines from the Rheinhessen region because they are sweet and fruity, but low in acid. The climate in California is warmer than in Germany, so the vine does not have to work to grow. This struggle is what gives character to the wine, just like people.

Spurr: Do you consider yourself a winemaker of the old, traditional style?

Ehses-Hansen: Yes. We still age our wine in wood barrels and see that nothing is rushed. Good wine takes a long time to make. Also, when my wine states on the label that it is a Riesling from a certain vineyard from a certain year, then it is 100 percent what it says. German wine laws allow us to blend 25 percent from another grape or vineyard or year, but I don’t do this. Many of the wines produced now are from co-operatives which take all of the shortcuts, such as using “suss reserve” [a quantity of sweet wine set aside to halt fermentation and sweeten the wine to the desired level]. We call these “factory wines.” Other growers like myself still take the time to let the wine develop in a natural way to preserve its complexity.

Joachim Ehses-Hansen’s candid comments were a revelation in the usual self-promoting world of the wine trade. Regarding wine fraud, let me emphasize withEhses-Hansen that deception is not acommon practice, but when it does occur,it strikes at the core of the wine experience. Popularity breeds dishonesty,so don’t buy blindly simply because yourecognize the name or like the price.Above all, find a merchant you can trustand follow his advice.