The Elbe Valley 2012 – Food & Wine
Food & Wine
Food
There’s not much to say about the food on our journey. For lunch we bought rolls, cheese, ham, sausage, cakes, fruit and so on where we could or bought filled rolls from bakers’ shops. The local plum cake, more like plum crumble, was also a hit with most of the group. Dinner was either in the hotel restaurant or somewhere else local. It was the asparagus season so most places had an asparagus-themed menu alongside their standard offer. Travellers in Germany have to accept that there’s little variety – one restaurant menu is much like another so which one you choose is just a gamble. The only exception was the two nights in Dresden where we ate in two different Italian restaurants. John eats fish but not meat but we had no problem finding places where we could all eat.
Wine
Sachsen (Saxony) is the most easterly of Germany’s wine-growing regions and one of the most northerly wine regions in Europe. It stretches for about 30 miles from Pillnitz in the south to Dresden, Radebeul and Meissen and covers about 460 hectares (1,140 acres), making it Germany’s third smallest region. There is evidence1 that vines have been grown in the region since at least 1161. The vineyard area was smaller, about 200 hectares, before German reunification in 1990: expansion has been funded with European Union subsidies2. I was told that the area under cultivation is still increasing and historically has been much larger.
In 2009 production in the region was 951,100 litres which is only 0.1% of Germany’s total. 81% is white, 19% red (2010/11 figures)3. The three main grape varieties are Müller-Thurgau, Riesling and Weissburgunder but many others are grown in smaller quantities, including Grauer Burgunder, Spätburgunder, Roter Traminer, Kerner, Dornfelder, Goldriesling, Scheurebe and a rarity, Dunkelfelder.
Sachsen does not produce wine on a large scale agribusiness basis. The vineyards are divided into small plots that are cultivated by more than 3,000 small independent growers. The three biggest wine producers are the Saxony wine cooperative in Meissen (Bereich Meissen) with about 1,600 members, the Saxony state winery at Schloss Wackerbarth and the only quality-certified winery in Saxony, Schloss Proschwitz owned by Prinz zur Lippe4. As well as Schloss Proschwitz there are about a dozen independent producers who produce wine under their own name: Walter Schuh, Jan Ulrich, Vincenz Richter, Frédéric Fourré and Drei Herren are some of them.
The wines are mostly dry (trocken) or semi-sweet (halbtrocken).
I was surprised that the producers make hardly any effort to promote their wines to visitors. We walked past the premises of at least three growers: they were all firmly closed. In contrast to France, Spain or Italy there was no invitation or opportunity to visit, taste, and buy. There isn’t much point in creating a weinwanderweg if there’s no wein available. In cafés and restaurants there were wine lists with a selection of wines but that was all. Our vision of strolling through vineyards and dropping in to the occasional weingut for a tasting and a chat was just a fantasy. In fact the only promotional activity for the region as a whole seems to be an annual festival in October but even then the ‘open vineyards’ event only lasts a day and a half. Blink and you miss it! In Meissen there’s a Sachsen Wine Centre whose leaflet says you can go there to find out everything you want to know about the local wines – but it’s on an industrial estate on the opposite side of the river about two miles from the town centre. So all in all I concluded they weren’t that interested.
The other thing that puzzled me was why all the wine I saw was made and sold as single-variety varietals – the labels named the producer and the type of grape. It must surely take an expert palate and years of experience to distinguish one grower’s Riesling from another’s. I thought the individual producers who were happy to put their name to their wines (as opposed to the ‘area’ wines) would be keen to differentiate their products – blending different grape varieties and producing a set of wines that was characteristic of their weingut. I wanted to ask about this.
In the centre of Meissen there were two retail outlets. Both were expensively fitted-out with discreet lighting and bottles displayed like treasures. In the first one the elderly lady spoke no English so I didn’t stay. The second was much better. It was the Walter Schuh shop and the young assistant who was the only person around spoke good English and was happy to chat. He didn’t have an answer to my question about “Why only varietals?”, but claimed there was significant variation between the wines made from the same grape grown in different vineyards, depending on slope, aspect, soil etc. He offered to arrange a tasting for the five of us in a few days time, but I explained we were leaving the next day.
He told me a little about Walter Schuh’s wines: untypically, about 30% of their production is red. He spoke lovingly of their Dunkelfelder and gave me a tasting glass. It was a dark rich red which reminded me of Cahors, with aromas of plum and blackcurrant, full-bodied and complex on the palate with blackberry ousting the blackcurrant. He claimed chocolate too, but I wasn’t convinced! I would have bought a couple of bottles if I could have taken them on the aeroplane.
So I don’t have extensive tasting notes from the few days we were in the region. Jan Ulrich’s Grauburgunder was light and fresh with notes of honey and melon. Drei Herren’s rosé (I didn’t note the variety) was moderately full-bodied, slightly peppery and very enjoyable. A Kornfelder was rather bland. Schuh’s Spätburgunder was lighter than the Dunkelfelder but a nice well-produced wine.
Most of the wine produced in Sachsen is consumed in the region. Maybe that’s why they don’t work very hard at selling it. I guess it’ll probably stay that way while all the small producers – some of them must just be hobbyists – can cultivate a hectare or two and put their crop through the local co-ops. It seems unlikely we’ll see the wines in our own wine merchants any time soon.
1 J. Robinson (ed) “The Oxford Companion to Wine” Third Edition Oxford University Press 2006 ISBN 0-19-860990-6
3 The original link to 2010/11 figures no longer works. You may find more up-to-date data here: www.germanwines.de/service/downloads/.