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GERMANIA: What The Rhine Means To Wine
By: Jonathon Alsop	Page 1 of 3  next >>

As I was packing recently to leave on a tour of the vineyards and wineries of the Rhine in Germany, I struggled to decide what shoes to bring. Sandals? No, not sandals, not to efficient, practical Germany, I thought; pack sensible shoes for Germany -- that sturdy hand-made Canadian pair -- and save the sexy man sandals for Spain, France or Italy.

And then it hit me: my ideas about the people I was about to meet, the wines and the food, even down to the choices of what I was going to wear carried within them a distinction between sophisticated worldly Roman Europe -- Italy, France and Spain -- and Germania, the untamed eastern part of Europe the ancient Romans never managed to subdue.

The Rhine is the geographical boundary between these two historical worlds, and the river represents the furthest reach of the conquering Roman empire. Even though it's been more than 2,000 years, wine life on both sides of the river is still very different. West of the Rhine, France and Spain make many different white, pink and red wines from dozens of different grapes, as do the Italians. On the other side of the river, the Germans make 99% white wine 99% from the riesling grape.

After it descends from its source high in the Alps, the mighty Rhine river flows relentlessly northward almost a thousand miles in a straight line, through France and Germany, past Luxembourg and Belgium until it reaches The Netherlands and the North Sea. Right in the middle however, just west of Frankfurt, the river meets the Taunus Mountains and takes one dramatic left turn for 20 miles, then another dramatic right turn back north to the sea.

This region is called the Rheingau, the bend in the river where the Rhine slows a bit, grows both turbulent and shallow, and makes its way through steep hillsides until it can resume its course. The Rheingau gets its name from "aue," the ancient Germanic name for the long channel islands that divide the river at this point into almost parallel lanes.

Over the millennia, the Rhine has both deposited rich soils in the Rheingau and exposed ancient geology by carving away the hillsides. Since the river runs east to west here, the land's southern exposure to the sun is unique along the otherwise northerly river. Many of Germany's most famous rieslings come from this region, and the Rheingau's steep hills and fertile soils are famous for growing rich ripe grapes that are full of flavor.

In the US today, the image of German food and wine is where Italian cuisine was 20 or 30 years ago. Back in the day, Italian wine was thought to be sweet, like German wine, and in the American consumer's mind, sweet still equals cheap. In a world gone mad for red wine, great white wines often find themselves under-appreciated while they wait for the pendulum to swing back their way.

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