Florian Weingart from Spay on the Mittelrhein has been running the family business with his wife Ulrike since 1996. His family had been farmers and winegrowers in the village since the beginning of the 18th century. Weingart's parents restructured the mixed farm into a winery in the 1960s. He completed his studies in Geisenheim as a viticultural engineer and currently cultivates six hectares of vineyards on a property of around 16 hectares, which originally consisted of more than 400 individual plots growing Riesling and some Pinot Noir. He and his family have also planted 300 fruit trees and over 800 shrubs and hedges. In this way, Florian Weingart wants to create a unique showcase in the region for the different eras of utilisation of the cultural landscape on the steep slope.

Over a year ago, the DWV presented the draft of a new wine law, which introduced the framework for a new classification system. After that, it was quiet on the wine scene. Why was there no discussion?

Florian Weingart: There was surprisingly little discussion. The VDP's classification efforts have been going on for 20 years and have already helped to shape the image of the wine industry on this topic. A new generation of winegrowers has also adopted the ideas underlying the approach quite uncritically in some cases.

A top vineyard site classifies itself

Have you developed a proposal?

Florian Weingart: I have tried to deal with the problem intellectually and scientifically in order to create a basis for discussion. The Mittelrhein, where I come from, is a wine region that is very strongly orientated towards Riesling. However, our Riesling culture clearly clashes with the planned classification of vineyard sites, because the diversity of the different Riesling wines cannot be pinned down to a specific soil segment or part of a plot. We traditionally produce very different qualities within a good site in one year. Therefore, the idea of an exclusively dry Grosses Gewächs that stands alone at the top is alien to the Riesling culture. Perhaps also historically wrong. The great, expensive Riesling wines that are emulated today were largely not dry in the 19th century.

The new wine law attempts to merge the Burgundy and Bordeaux systems. What is your position on this?

Florian Weingart: The difficulty is to compare the two approaches of the French system with the German system. We have many, many more grape varieties and wine categories in Germany. Whether in Burgundy or Bordeaux—there you have the first wine and the second wine. Sometimes there's a white wine in Bordeaux, but that's it. We can have six wine categories and five grape varieties in one vineyard. These are just two reasons that are mutually exclusive, because the subject of classification is much more heterogeneous. In the development of French appellations, a very strong typification primarily emerged, in which the origin is identified with a specific product. In contrast, we have wine that is produced in very different ways in one vineyard—there is no French standardisation here. Unfortunately, the idea that only a top dry wine, a Grosses Gewächs, is typical of a particular origin is technically incorrect. Of course, a sweet Kabinett and a tart Spätlese are also typical. We encountered precisely this problem during discussions in the "Schutzgemeinschaft Mittelrhein" when we tried to apply the principle of "the closer the origin, the higher the quality". This is not enough for Riesling. If I just write Riesling and the cadastral site on the label, the consumer still doesn't know what kind of wine to expect.

The new vineyard classification creates feudalistic privileges of origin

In your opinion, do we need a classification of vineyard sites at all?

Florian Weingart: A site classification is just an assessment of quality potential. It describes the potential of origins. That's where the problem starts: Stocked and unstocked vineyards, historical vineyards—how do you assess their potential? For me, the fact that you want to include a classification of vineyards at the same time is an admission that there is no technical method for evaluating potential without it being realised. There are no corked bottles hanging on the vines. It's a long way from the grape to the wine. In addition, the VDP concept contains a totally problematic combination: according to the plans, winegrower A applies to classify an area. He is granted this because he owns a VDP winery and can already prove five vintages of good wines. The neighbour is not a member of the VDP and does not have his plot classified. Seen from the outside, it has the same potential. The two winegrowers are direct neighbours in the vineyard. But only one of the parcels is a Grosse Lage; the neighbour's parcel is not. However, if winegrower A acquires parcel B, it will presumably be categorised directly as a Grosse Lage. This cannot be reconciled with the term "site classification". This reduces the concept to absurdity. And it is a fundamental problem that the site is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for wine quality. At best, there is a higher frequency of top wines from a particular vineyard than from elsewhere. And in the interaction of the soil with the climate and the annual weather, these boundaries may shift continuously—keyword: climate change—and with the weather from year to year. It is no coincidence that in the northern wine regions we traditionally have at least as strong a quality statement of the vintage, i.e. the temporal origin, as the site as the spatial origin.

The German Winegrowers' Association wants to transfer responsibility for site classification to the VDP. Both have founded an association for this purpose.

Florian Weingart: That's putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. I know that such proposals have long been on the table in the executive committee of the German Winegrowers' Association: nobody wants to deal with the problems that arise when the DWV starts classifying and is sued by winegrowers as a result. So the idea was born: we'll leave the issue to the VDP and let them see how they get on. In my view, that's absolutely impossible. Even before the proposal was made by the winegrowers' association, the VDP had already expressed the wish to play a leading role in the protective associations or the committees for site classification. To keep a thumb on the pulse of who is allowed to classify and who is not. All wineries that have already produced Grosses Gewächs wines are allowed to continue producing them seamlessly, while all others must first qualify with five vintages and prove the abstract level of the vineyard and its historical significance. These criteria do not call up the physical suitability of the site, as there is no method for this. Instead, you basically just have to drag in historical maps and documents or whatever as evidence. But only those who have been there before can do that. The result is an imbalance in favour of the VDP wine estates—and the VDP is now also supposed to be in charge of organising the project. This will not lead to this field being opened up to all producers on an equal footing. And it is difficult for me because wine law has so far been democratically organised and based on the Basic Law. Wines are assessed according to their actual quality and not on the basis of the quality promise of an origin. This means that all participants in the market with equally good products can potentially be honoured equally. Site classification, on the other hand, creates feudalistic privileges of origin—and its system does not work professionally.

Why not?

Florian Weingart: Today's scientific concept, which is also the basis in Germany, for the demarcation of top vineyards is that of a standardised terroir. As our vineyard demarcations usually don't correspond to this at all, the aim is to achieve a narrow, parcel-specific demarcation. We have the supposedly logical idea here: the parcel-specific approach enables us to clearly delineate the quality potential. But in our steep slopes, the terrain formations are often particularly small-scale. For example, within the Spay "In der Zech" cadastral site, we have lime-free slate on one hectare of cultivated land, but this is only a small section. We also have loess-influenced slate soils and slate-influenced loess soils with lime contents of up to six per cent, we have decalcified loess soils—and all of this lies next to each other over a distance of 100 metres. I would find it very difficult to make a judgemental distinction here. However, if I focus on just one homogeneous part of the site, I become extremely susceptible to the differences in annual weather conditions. I will inevitably classify incorrectly because this may only work in three out of five years. But what do I do in the other two years if the better wine grows 30 metres further down because it's a dry year and the soil thickness is greater there—or 50 metres further up in a wet year? In the end, the designation, sales price, quality, and origin have to match. Then the winegrowers would be forced to change the labels on the barrels in the cellar. But that can't be the aim. The whole approach of classifying terroirs that are as homogeneous as possible is fundamentally problematic for the goal of labelling the best wines year after year.

Read more

• DWV and VDP found supporting association for Erste and Grosse Gewächse wines
• DWV adopts framework for statutory site classification
• VDP President Christmann: "We want a combination of Bordeaux and Burgundy"