VDP Grosse Lagen unveiled

Germany's VDP association of top wine growers recently published this list of superior vineyard sites and they are currently working on creating digital maps of each one. These Grosse Lagen (not to be confused with Grosslagen) are listed alphabetically by region, and then by village. Those that are asterisked are not yet fully ratified. The Grosse Lagen are at the top of the VDP's classification pyramid and wines labelled Grosses Gewächs (GG) are dry wines from such sites. We will be publishing Jancis's and Michael's notes on this year's just-released GGs very soon. Pictured here, courtesy of the VDP/Toni Jost, is the Im Hahn Grosse Lage in Bacharach (Mittelrhein).

Where one part of the vineyard name is in quotation marks, this 'usually indicates the name of the historical vineyard, situated in a bigger vineyard that usually turns into an Erste Lage as soon as the Grosse Lage [the bit in quote marks] is fully ratified, eg PULVERMÄCHER "SCHLÖSSLESWENGERT"*, where PULVERMÄCHER (the former Grosse Lage) turns into an Erste Lage. So in the long term, many of the names in quotes will turn into the final names. Of course, there are always exceptions – some of the names are phantasy names, some will not be accepted.' Got that?