There has been a new article or blog post on Wine Berserkers titled ‘Can American Fans Save German Riesling?’ by admin
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Slate has an article by Mike Steinberger on the fate of sweet German wines. Here is an excerpt:
For at least the last 60 years or so, a certain amount of sweetness has been a defining attribute of German rieslings. There is some dispute as to whether the “fruity” style can be described as traditional; while sweet wines enjoyed great prestige in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were rarities then, and most German wines were apparently fairly dry. The advent of sterile filtration enabled German winemakers to stop fermentations in order to consistently produce wines with discernible amounts of residual sugar. And it was after World War II that German consumers developed a raging thirst for such rieslings, a fact that is generally attributed to postwar sugar rationing, which had the paradoxical effect of giving Germans an insatiable sweet tooth.
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There is more on the topic on his excellent wine blog:
As some of you know, my wine column was among the casualties of the recent budget cuts at Slate. I had several pieces in the pipeline when I learned the bad news, and Slate agreed to run them. The first of the remaining articles, about the fate of sweet German Rieslings, was posted on Wednesday. One of the people cited in the story was David Schildknecht, who covers Germany for the Wine Advocate. Apart from Terry Theise, I don’t know anyone who is more knowledgeable about German wines than David, with whom I correspond periodically by email.
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Link to article: http://wineberserkers.com/content/?p=926