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Five German Wine Experts On How To Invest And Drink Well At Nearly Any Price Point
The German wines you should buy, cellar and drink now.
Anna Lee C. Iijima · Dec 14, 2023
Even for the savviest of wine lovers, German wines can be a minefield of umlauts, consonant clusters and ever-changing quality classifications.
But no country comes close to replicating the diversity of styles of Riesling, Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir), Silvaner and other varieties produced in Germany. And for collectors, German wines offer a combination of ageworthiness and affordability that are exceedingly rare anywhere else.
I grilled five top German wine experts on how to buy, collect and drink German wine like a pro: What vintages should you be buying now? What does “ageworthy” really mean for German wines? In the climate change era, does vintage still matter? Whose wines should you fill your cellar with?
Here’s what they say:
Evan Spingarn
german portfolio manager, David Bowler Wine
- If you’re a collector looking for value — wines that will drink incredibly decades from now and give exponentially more pleasure than what you’ll get for the same price anywhere else — there’s no other region that offers what Germany does.
- German white wines age better than any other white wine in the world, regardless of vintage. Better than white Burgundy and certainly better than any New World Chardonnay.
- Even the most delicate, low-alcohol Kabinett that you’d never think to age will drink beautifully for 25, 30 even 45 years.
- A mature Kabinett transforms completely in texture — it’s not that feathery sweet thing anymore. It becomes ethereal and elusive in a weird, sexy way. They’re incredible, fascinating wines. You can find aged examples of these wines cheap because most people don’t think to collect them.
- The Mosel is where the most ageworthy wines are made, largely because the residual sugar and high acidity preserve these wines over time. Willi Schaefer and Prüm are always at the top of the list. In the Saar it’s Zilliken or Egon Müller. I love the wines of Stefan Müller there too. In the Middle Mosel, obviously the Haag family — Fritz Haag is one of those great, classic producers — but also his brother Thomas Haag’s Schloss Lieser.
- Up north in the Terrassenmosel you have Lubentiushof and Franzen in the Bremmer Calmont — the steepest vineyard in Europe. Also Clemens Busch — those wines taste almost Alsatian as they get older, it’s a whole different aesthetic.
- In Rheinhessen, I’m not as big of a believer of [cult producer] Klaus Peter Keller as others are. Keller doesn’t have that ethereal quality that I look to from Germany. But apparently I’m alone in that, because the wines go for astronomical amounts of money. As an alternative, producers like Gunderloch or Wittmann have an incredible track record. They grow largely in the same area as Keller but with very, very different approaches.
- The next generation of benchmark wines are coming from producers like Materne & Schmitt, two women [Rebecca Materne and Janina Schmitt] who are doing heroic work in the Terrassenmosel by saving old, abandoned vines on these really steep, treacherous slopes. Or Gernot Kollmann at Immich-Batterieberg. He’s literally a cultural hero. He single-handedly rehabilitated a 500-year-old estate with 1,000-year-old vineyards that was falling to pieces and in receivership with the banks.
Nicolas Langer-Pfaff
Export director, Weingut Robert Weil
- The Rheingau has an incomparable history when it comes to collectible wines. In the past, people talked about the four great wines of the world: Bordeaux, white Burgundy, red Burgundy and Rieslings from the Rheingau. In 1893 Robert Weil Auslese sold for 16 German mark a bottle (over €800 today) — double the price of wines from Latour or Lafite then.
- If you’re looking for something that’s ready to drink now but that will also be good for the next five or 10 years, I always suggest looking at the Ortsweine, or village-wine category. They’re always an exceptional value.
- If you’re looking for something to drink in the long run — over 10, 15 or 20 years — you should look into single-vineyard wines. Not just the dry Grosses Gewächs, or GG, and Erste Lage [Germany’s Grand Cru and Premier Cru] — those are no-brainers. But if you really want to be blown away, it’s the fruity-style wines you need to consider. You don’t have to go for something [rare or expensive] like a Trockenbeerenauslese or Beerenauslese. A great Spätlese or Auslese from a great producer is so ageworthy, it will be amazing in 10 or 15 years.
- Kabinett and Spätlese are really unique to Germany within the world of wine. Tasted young, the sweetness is very dominant and obvious, but over the years, these wines will taste drier and drier. The sugar is still there and gives good structure on the palate, but the wine will taste dry. That’s why they start to be extremely good with food.
- Don’t drink GGs too young. GG Rieslings are really appealing young — they’re fresh and crisp and already express terroir so beautifully, which is why people underestimate their aging potential. Being patient is really rewarding, especially for those cooler vintages like 2013, 2014, 2016 or 2021. They need time.
- I like to wait at least 10 years to open a GG. I always tell collectors to buy a case and open the first bottle after ten years. After that, open a bottle each year. Take notes and watch how the wine progresses.
Paula Redes Sidore
Co-founder, Trink Magazine
- If you’re looking to put together a cellar, start with a couple of warmer vintages that are more likely to open up earlier. Wines from cool vintages are the ones you put away with a “DO NOT TOUCH” sign. I tend to prefer cooler vintages like 2008 and 2013 that will take longer to open, but have really long legs.
- If you buy a VDP wine [from one of the 200 members of the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter association of quality producers], you know the winery is hitting the quality benchmarks they need to be a VDP member; it has that Good Housekeeping stamp of approval. But just because a producer isn’t a VDP member doesn’t mean they’re not making amazing, fantastic wines. Carl Loewen or Markus Molitor in the Mosel are great examples — neither are VDP members, but their single-vineyard bottlings are among the best in Germany.
- German sparkling wines are still totally underrated, but they compete with the best in the world. They’ve come so far both on the traditional and the more experimental side of things. They tend to be expensive because they’re entirely hands-on projects, but they’re fantastic wines that really show origin and a tradition that goes back quite a ways.
- German Pinot Noirs are so seductive in their aroma, they’re so floral and uniquely transparent. But Pinot Blanc is the middle child of the Pinot family that everyone always forgets about. Germany has the most Pinot Blanc plantings in the world. With the diversity of soils we have here, especially the sandstone, it does beautifully.
Jin Ahn
General Manager/Co-Owner, Noreetuh and Pavé restaurants
- There’s an incredible momentum, energy and excitement behind German wines right now. Sure, the wines have always been really good, but there’s been a lot of change in the last 10 or 20 years. There’s been a big generational shift and the change in climate has been beneficial, too. People are looking for more of that nervous energy, that tension and vibrancy in their wines, and it just points straight at Germany.
- In terms of quality-to-price ratio, comparing German wines with Burgundy is night and day. QPR for Burgundy is down the drain now. The quality for German Spätburgunder is so high, it knocks people's socks off. But the supply is so limited. German wineries are still very much small family businesses and the majority of them are keeping the wines domestically [rather than exporting them].
- I’m really into Silvaner and I think we’re going to be talking about it a lot more in the future. There’s just so much clarity with Silvaner, it’s a beautiful dry expression of wine without a lot of bells and whistles. It’s not a grape you can hide anything behind or manipulate.
- For really blue-chip wines, like the Kellers or Julian Haart, playing the allocation game might get you two bottles of something on release. There’s no way you can amass any collection of German wines at this point without going through the auction market or some kind of gray market. You have to be very careful about what not to buy and there are no reliable [secondary market] sellers.
- Keller is the ultimate blue chip, but prices have gotten to a point where they’re just too expensive. It’s almost like DRC [Domaine de la Romanée-Conti] at this point. I don’t buy Keller unless I find a relatively bargain Spätburgunder. Keller is a marketing machine and whatever he touches turns to gold. That being said, his production level is relatively high so the wines get traded a lot.
- Julian Haart, for me, is another blue chip. Those wines are absolute bargains if you can find them, but they’re just so rare.
Kirk Wille
President, Loosen Bros. USA
- In a place like Germany, with its historically cooler, marginal climate, vintage definitely matters. But those differences in vintages are what’s so interesting. I really love those classic, cooler vintages where you get long, cool hang times and really great tension — that interplay between ripeness and acidity.
- 1990 was really the first warm vintage in Germany when it was still cold enough that grapes didn’t ripen consistently. It was kind of the threshold of this new climate change era. If you can get your hands on a 1990 German Riesling now, they’re just glorious.
- In the old days, you didn’t drink wines from Germany before they were 15 or 20 years old. That’s when the wines really start to get interesting and show where they’re from.
- Even in hot vintages like 2003 — a year that a lot of people said wouldn’t age well — the wines from producers who really know what they were doing are aging gloriously. Even relatively low-acid Riesling still has a much higher acidity than other grape varieties.
- The prices for extraordinary Pinot Noir from Germany are a bargain compared to Burgundy. And for a lot of us, the German wines are just more interesting wines. They have more of an edge to them; they have this energy that I like so much.
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