I’m not quite sure when it happened. There was no moment of Damascene conversion, no single palate-altering bottle or preconception-shredding cellar tour but some time over the past couple of years, the weight of evidence (measured in the strictly scientific unit of empty bottles per week) began to point to an unexpected conclusion: the single most improved, exciting, and all-round high-performing wine country in the world right now might be Germany.
For drinkers of my generation (X) and older this is quite the volte face. We came to wine-drinking during Germany’s nadir as a quality producer – the second half of the 20th century when a kind of crazed, number-chasing ethos took over the country’s increasingly chemical-soaked vineyards. These were devoted to monstrous yields from lesser grape varieties grown in unsuitable places, the emblematic product being the bafflingly successful sugary acid-water sold as Liebfraumilch.
