No, it’s very much a matter of taste. I can’t tell you how many dinners I’ve been at where some people rave over a 20-year-old riesling and others send it down the dump bucket.
Is that why there was so much of my Donnhoff 375ml was left over?
Perhaps those dumping the 20 year old Riesling have no taste.
Sulphur and filtration.
For my tastes. There are only 1 or 2 vintages in the last 20 where we’ll stored top producers wines are not fresh today.
A Grunhaus QbA from the 70s can still be totally fresh.
Here’s an answer:
According to this article by WB’er Bill Hooper, Germans developed sterile filtering technology at the beginning of the 20th century that could remove yeasts. I had no idea it went back that far.
Sulfur then deters any further processing of the sugar by any yeasts or bacteria that creep into the wine after.
These days the vast majority of German producers will halt fermentation by chilling the tanks and then adding sulfur followed by kieselguhr (DE) filtration and then steril filtration at bottling. At the point that fermentation is arrested, most of the nitrogen (either natural or added) will have been used and the wine is only very slowly going dry. In this case there is no great shock to the yeast nor does it require a huge dose of Sulfur, which is most often given using the gaseous form. Riesling I think gets judged the most unfairly by the no-sulfur nazis in that even dry Riesling has a little residual sugar at bottling. If it doesn’t have a couple of grams it can be a difficult wine given the high acidity. But even a wine with 4 or so g/l RS that does continue fermentation will produce a dangerous amount of CO2. All that said, the catalyst for reduction of free SO2 at most estates is the changing of the guard to the next generation in the family. Not only have we more current grads been taught to work cleaner in the vineyard and with more selective harvest standards but also many of the younger guys have traveled and worked in other countries where they’ve been influenced by practices there.
Cheers,
Bill
THANK YOU ALL for the great answers to my fermentation question!
The Schiller article is great, I had not run across it before, nor had I heard of the use of Seussreserve, in fact I am a little shocked to hear that this process is allowed in Germany, although I think I understand that it would likely only show up in wines which are already fermented to dryness (so probably full-strength ABV, maybe 12% or over) and then to balance the acidity, somewhat as in Champagne.
Thanks again!
[Deleted]
Well, this both makes sense and explains why I had never heard of this, I don’t think I have had more than a handful of non-Pradikat wines in my life.
Prädikat wines (Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese) have no sugar added to raise the alcohol, also known as chaptalization.
Süssreserve, or “sweet reserve,” which is partly fermented or unfermented grape juice, can also be added to a Prädikat wine to sweeten it, whether it’s made in a dry or sweet style. Although the Prädikat Wine Estates, as the VDP calls itself in English, wants the Prädikat designations to apply only to unmistakably sweet wines, as was common for Spätlese and Auslese from the 1920s on. Many nonmembers are following along.
Exactly Lars!
Sussreserve has fallen out of favor but it’s allowed.
Who here remembers Hochgewachs?* 
*chaptalized QbA
Süssreserve, which first came into use after the Second World War, is usually applied to a wine fermented dry, but not always. It was especially popular in the 1970s and 1980s.
I got it wrong. My bad. I was thinking of chaptalization, as you surmised.
That’s an easy one.
It’s where Harry Potter went to school.
Jurgen,
People can like what they like. It is just that I think of RS as a preservative and that wines with some RS will last and improve longer than will trocken wines. I was not commenting on quality, just on two reasons I saw (other being location) why Germans might drink their wines younger than others do.
I think I have faded a little and am often elusive and maybe coy, but probably rarely ethereal. ![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
I don’t this that is true. I think chaptalization can only be employed with non-Pradikat wines but I think Sussreserve can be added as long as it is natural grape sugar, etc.
That’s true. But there are a few well-known estates that still use Süssreserve.
Hochgewächs, or “exalted growth,” was an old noble term for a top wine, such as the finest Auslese. Since 1987, it designates a Riesling Qualitätswein (formerly QbA) that meets certain criteria, such as a rather low minimum must weight of 67 degrees Oechsle.