I recently tasted a number of German wines imported by The Winery, London W9, David Motion's Maida Vale neighbourhood wine store whose stock is motivated entirely by his personal passions. He reckons he probably has the best range of German wines available in a single shop in Britain. I'm not 100 per cent certain of this. Justerini & Brooks carry a great selection of sweeter styles – though admittedly they have given up over-the-counter retail, despite occupying some of the most desirable retail premises in London in St James's Street. The Winery certainly has, without any shadow of a doubt, the best stock of dry to dryish German wines in Britain.
And a funny thing happened during this tasting. It is always a nightmare deciding on a tasting order for German wines – whether to do it by region, age, sugar level, alcohol level... Motion decided to show the wines by producer, so it was a sort of switchback ride from dry to sweet and back again. He had been worried that the dry wines would seem too austere after the fruitier wines but in fact almost the reverse happened – as far as my palate was concerned anyway.
Tasted immediately after the dry purity of the best dry German whites, the sweeter more traditional styles suddenly seemed rather fusty, loose and sulphur-stinky. German winemakers have routinely used fairly hefty sulphur additions to keep their wines with higher residual sugar levels stable and although many have been systematically reducing sulphur dioxide levels, it can still come as quite a shock to encounter a sweeter German wine between two drier ones. (I showed a J J Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr 2002 in Zurich last month when launching some German editions of my books with Hallwag and one or two tasters were almost revolted by the sulphur levels.
On the basis of this tasting I'd say it could be a mistake to mingle dry and sweet wines. I'm sure that when I'm tasting sweeter German wine styles all together, I'm much more indulgent about sulphur levels.
See purple pages for my detailed tasting notes on these wines.