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You get the most wine for your money between ten and 20 euros per bottle. So it's a good idea to stick to village wines. We blind tasted around 300 of them from Germany and Austria.

It sounds a bit paradoxical: we hear everywhere that the sales crisis in wine community is having a particularly strong impact on the so-called "mid-price segment", and here mainly in the region between ten and 20 euros per bottle. Yet this is precisely the price range in which you get the most wine for your money.

At least if you know where. In this context, it's not the worst idea to stick to the village wine category, which was rediscovered in Germany and Austria not so long ago. After all, the second level of the pyramid of origin, known from the French wine hierarchy and especially from Burgundy, is not really new here either. If you look at historical wine lists, you will realise that village wines (French "villages") were once widespread, famous, and expensive in Germany. A Würzburg, Rüdesheim, Assmannshäuser or Forster wine could be the most expensive wine on the menu—more expensive than today's much more famous French growths. The origin was a guarantee of quality far above the grape variety. In the English-speaking world, "Hochheimer" even changed from "Hockamore" to "Hock", a synonym for German white wine—regardless of its origin.

After the world wars, the predicate system based on the sugar content of the grapes at harvest also replaced the pyramid of origin in the dry sector. With the wine law of 1971, the idea of origin was lost through the extension of vineyard designations to less suitable areas and the introduction of large vineyards without any claim to typicity. From then on, even the palest litre wines could adorn themselves with grandiose vineyard names—and often still do today.

Village wines, on the other hand, are a completely different matter where they are taken seriously. Not only do you often get excellent quality with village wines, but ideally they reflect their origin so clearly that—as in Burgundy—you can taste them quite reliably even without looking at the label. The new village wines are therefore not simply a quality level, but rather a commitment: to origin, home—to terroir.

Last year, we tasted around 300 village wines from Germany and, to a lesser extent, from Austria. Not least for technical reasons, we were only able to include those wines that are explicitly labelled as "Ortswein", which is why we mainly list wines that have been classified as village wine in a corresponding association classification. In some cases, however, the designation is misleading. Some wines in our list are on the same level as wines from top vineyards in the winery hierarchy. They had to be downgraded to village wine, for example, because the respective grape varieties may not be offered with a vineyard designation due to association regulations, or because it is a cuvée of wines from different vineyards in one village. The wine designation rarely helps here by providing additional information such as "Reserve" or "Goldkapsel— but the price usually speaks a clear language.

Most genuine village wines have one thing in common: they offer a lot of wine for the money.

Tasting: Village wines Riesling

Tasting: Village wines White wines Pinot varieties

Tasting: Village wines Silvaner

Tasting: Village wines Other white varieties

Tasting: Village wines Pinot Noir

Tasting: Village wines Other red varieties

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