Grosslage Sender: Ian

Simple questions sometimes lead to hugely complex answers. I'll simplify as best I can.

le-on Wed, 02 Mar 2005 09:32:05 +0100, tu disais-you said:-

I am not aware that Austria has adopted the Grosslage, I'd be surprised, since (IMO) it is a great mistake.

Grossalgen must - exactly like Einzellagen - mention the village. I can't remember if they must mention the Bereich, but they certainly do mention the region somewhere.

The problem facing German wine authorities back before '71 was that there were so many individual vineyards, that it was almost impossibly hard to know them all. At the same time, German wine law worked under the guiding principle that Oechsle was all (that's the OG - Original Gravity, measuring the sugar content of the must) and that the vineyard was relatively unimportant.

So, they created the Bereich, or region - which could be considered more or less the equivalent to a cote wine in Burgundy, and the Grosslage which was designed to be an appellation grouping vineyards of roughly equivalent quality which in its turn could be considered to be more or less equivalent to the Burgundian village, or Cru (thus Gevrey-Chambertin 1 cru, which doesn't specify the vineyard), because although the law didn't recognise different quality terroirs, the growers knew they existed and insisted on it - especially the prestigious and powerful ones. ALL existing Einzellagen therefore became part of a new Grosslage system, which in turn was part of a Bereich. Therefore, a grower with holdings in - say - three Piesport vineyards, Domherr, Kreuzwingert and Grafenberg, (heard of any of these?) could market them under the name of Piesporter Michelsberg which is the Grosslage name covering Minheim, Piesport, Neumagen-Dhron, Trittenheim, Rivenich, Hetzerath and Selhem. (Heard of Michelsberg?). In this case, there was only one Grosslage, covering these villages.

However, as in Burgundy, growers with big enough holdings in Goldtropfchen continued to market their wines as Piesporter Goldtropfchen, (AOC Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos St Jacques) while less well known (and possibly lesser quality) vineyards might well be marketed as Piesporter Michelsberg.

In nearby Bernkastel - making very varied wines - Grosslage Badstube covered just 5 of the most reputed vineyards, while Kurfürstlay, covers the others plus some other outlying villages including the best Brauneberg vineyards, so one could well imagine that a grower with holdings in Juffer, was hardly going to call his wine Brauneberger Kurfürstlay, which was also the large Grosslage in nearby Bernkastel.

Therefore theoretically, (as in Burgundy) one could get excellent wines under the Grosslage name, in practice it's rare. Could you imagine any Burgundian Grower marketing a Meursault 1er Cru, (cru unspecified) when s-he could market as Meursault Genevrières?

As for the Bereich, in the whole of the MSR, you have Bereich Zell (lower Mosel, the villages from Koblenz in the NE to Zell in the SW) Bereich Bernkastel, (Middle Mosel, from Briedel down to Kenn), Bereich Obermosel, (obermosel from Igel down to Perl) and finally Bereich Saar-Ruwer, for wines made near those two rivers. Call it the equivalent of the Cotes de Nuits (if this extended from Marsannay to Beaune) Cotes de Beaune (Pommard to the Montrachets) etc.

How this was supposed to simpify life for purchasers I'm not quite sure!!

-- All the Best Ian Hoare mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website