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Germany
Our sales of German wines grow less fast than those from other areas. It's not so much that people don't like medium dry wines any more, though that's part of it, but more the drop in quality (and I'm not talking about the wines on our list!). The ever commercial Germans have spent years finding technical ways of keeping their wines competitive in the face of a strengthening deutschmark and high labour costs.
It isn't easy to make wine in Germany, being so northerly, but the Germans make it look easy. Unfortunately, they don't always make it taste quite right. Most German wine has lots of added sugar (in the form of concentrated grape juice), which gives it a distinct aftertaste tackiness. That sort of German wine we no longer sell. We restrict ourselves to wines from the Grand Estates, Germany's equivalent of Cru Classé, which are currently the world's greatest wine bargains.
Riesling is a wonderful grape, adored by wine trade professionals everywhere, but distrusted by the public on account of all the cheap imitations.
However, pure unadulterated Riesling is exquisite and quite the most suitable wine for the more delicate forms of modern cuisine. But the Germans have blown their chance by saturating the market with so much cheap, fake, sugar-water Liebfraumilch/ Niersteiner/Piesporter that many people now refuse to try anything German.
Things called Laski Riesling or similar, that are not Riesling at all, don't help either. But we'll keep on bringing in good, genuine German wine and will continue to reverse the trend.
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