… at the end, the Germans always win

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.

In addition to Riesling, Pinot Noir (also known as Spätburgunder) is one of the traditional German grape varieties. As early as 884, Emperor Karl III brought the red grape to Germany, where it was first cultivated in the Lake Constance region and in Baden. From the 13^th century onwards, it became more widespread, especially in the Rheingau, and later in the Palatinate and the Ahr.

Although the Pinot Noir is better suited than any other red wine variety to produce unique and incomparable, elegant, finesse-rich and multi-layered wines in a comparatively cool climate, after the Second World War German winegrowers mainly produced pale-coloured, thin drinks smelling of raspberry syrup. The reputation of the German Pinot Noir was thus sustainably damaged.

It was not until the 1980s that a few ambitious German winegrowers began to think about cultivating and developing Pinot Noir. After visits to Burgundy, it quickly became clear to them that the viticultural methods there could not be copied 1:1 and that the path to a sophisticated German Pinot Noir would have its own learning curve. They drastically reduced yields, separated from inferior high-yielding clones and perfected barrique ageing. Only gradually did this work bear fruit. Today German Pinot Noirs are quite capable of not only catching up with their Burgundian competitors, but in some cases even surpassing them in quality.

However, several of our jurors did not want to believe this at first. They insisted on the long winemaking tradition in Burgundy and pointed to the experience advantage of French winemakers, which could not be made up for within a few years. Two fractions formed. One saw Burgundy in the lead, the other expected an exciting head-to-head race in an unprejudiced blind tasting. The bet was on.

Each fraction chose nine wines of which they were particularly convinced. In addition, there were two so-called pirates, a Pinot Noir Précoce from the Ahr and a Pinot Noir from Croatia. When selecting the German Pinot Noirs, a wine from the lower price category was also deliberately chosen: the Pinot Noir from the Jakob Sebastian winery in the Ahr region cost just € 10 ex farm.

During the blind tasting, we asked the jurors to fill in the supposed origin of the individual wines on a questionnaire.

Image: Pixabay

The result was surprising. The first three places were taken by German Pinot Noirs. Almost all the jurors thought that the first-placed Hecklinger Schlossberg by Bernhard Huber was a prototypical representative of Burgundy. Second place was shared by Friedrich Becker's Sankt Paul and Chat Sauvage's Assmannshäuser Frankenthal. With the Latricières-Chambertin Grand Cru from Trapet, the best French Pinot reached only fourth place. And: The ten-euro Pinot Noir from Jakob Sebastian was easily able to keep up with some of the Premier Crus (€ 30 to € 40).

The evaluation of the questionnaires also showed: Only one juror was accurate in identifying the origins, all the others were only correct for about half of the wines – which would also have been expected with a random selection and a 50 percent hit probability.