“Jérôme, I booked your wine tour, but my wife doesn’t like Riesling”. This is the moment I realise a tour might get complicated – after all, we are touring the Riesling paradise that is Germany. My first reflex in these cases is to recommend a new wife, which is possibly not the best idea.

The sad fact is that I do sometimes have guests with preconceptions about Rieslings, so I have developed a bit of a strategy:

• Explain there’s more to German white wine than Riesling. There’s some fantastic other varietals worth exploring: Weissburgunder and Grauburgunder (Pinot Blanc and Grigio, respectively), Sauvignon Blanc, and some more Germanic varietals such as Scheurebe or Silvaner.
• Don’t tell. Start your tasting journey with a Winzersekt, a sparkling wine made ‘méthode traditionelle’. Some of the best are made from dry Riesling. Very often these elegant and light sparklings have aromas of candy and white flowers, and very light brioche notes. Reveal the Riesling connection only after your sparkling-lover has expressed his/her delight.
• Many Riesling-haters argue that Riesling is too sweet and too acidic, which might be true for some bottom-shelf or export Rieslings. Now give them both in one: a good off-dry Riesling Kabinett balances off acid and residual sweetness so nicely newbies will not even notice it is not 100 percent dry.
• By now cracks in the resistance are showing. It is time to pull out the big guns: pour a Grand Cru Riesling (Grosses Gewächs), if possible slightly matured. Few white wines have such complexity: peach, apple, apricot, limestone, pineapple, flint, wet stones… all that and more can be part of the aroma profile, and it varies from vineyard to vineyard, even though they might be just a couple of metres apart.
• All of that did not work? That’s the moment to pull out a bottle of Pinot Noir, Germany’s second great varietal whose best expressions give a Burgundy a good run for their money.

If that fails, order tea and look out of the window.

Jérôme is the founder of the Mainz-based wine tour company BottleStops. He firmly believes that German wines deserve better than Rhine Cruises and Blue Nun.

For much of its length the river Rhine is a big and nondescript waterway, responsible for draining much of Switzerland, Austria and Germany and carrying one helluva lot of freight en route. But for a comparatively short piece of its 1,233km journey from source to sea, it achieves true celebrity status as it cuts through the 260 metre deep Rhine gorge, creating some of the finest scenery in western Europe, to which mankind has added handsome towns, quirky watchtowers and towering castles. These features, together with the slings and arrows of history that went into creating them, has led to the whole gorge being listed as a site of world heritage by UNESCO. And that’s without even mentioning the wine; the gorge’s south-facing shores are slathered in some of the most productive vineyards in Europe.

The gorge has been inspirational for poets, painters and composers (Brahms, Wagner, Goethe) for several centuries – and buttock-clenching for ship’s captains for even longer. The artistically-inclined appreciate the contrast between the beautifully manicured layers of vines and the indomitable wildness of the water, which surges white-flecked through the gorge with a force that all but defeats the most resolute of marine diesels; a skipper needs special certification to tackle these waters.

The most spectacular stretch starts at Rudesheim (Bingen) in the south (frequent trains run from Frankfurt airport via Wiesbaden and take 75 minutes) and runs almost due north for around 65kms to Koblenz. For all of this distance – in fact all the way from Wiesbaden to Koblenz – a distance of 108kms, there are no bridges. Accordingly river transport is key, both in terms of cross-river ferries, and in long distance cruisers, some of them hotel boats savouring the scenery with leisurely stops and others of them day cruisers providing a regular scheduled service.

Three different approaches

For visitors there are three main choices of activity. For walkers, the Rheinsteig is one of Europe’s greatest long distance footpaths, and it follows the river on the east bank (the vineyard side) mostly in the state of Hesse. It sometimes dips down into towns, but much of the time it stays high, staying in shaded woodland of oak and birch, offering terrific views of the river below.

For cyclists, the west bank has the dedicated cycle path, down at river level, sometimes along the side of the road, sometimes doing its own thing at the water’s edge. It is impossible to get lost, and the river’s regular boats – or the trains, which serve both sides – are always at hand to return you to base if you don’t want to retrace your steps.

And then there are all the boat passengers, on day trips or on sleek, glittering hotel boats, sunning themselves in the gorge’s microclimate between stops at the key towns. These are Rudesheim, Bingen, Bacharach, Oberwesel, St Goar, Bad Salzig and Boppard, and they are usually linear in layout, with a castle above, with tower-encrusted walls, and collections of gabled and half timbered medieval houses, boasting plenty of places to sample the Riesling or the coffee and cake.

Elsewhere, the Rhine gorge remains pretty thinly populated, despite sitting at the heart of Europe’s most populous nation. Only wine-makers’ mansions break the patterns of vineyards, their tractors combing the slopes, and holding back rampant forest.

All in all it is a lovely place to pass a handful of days.

There’s no over-arching official website that covers the whole thing, but the Romantic Rhine is the best general site, and the Rheingau covers the wine-rich destinations at the southern and eastern end.

Back in the 1970s, many of Germany’s best wine-growing regions were cultivated for mass production, with familiar names like Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch aimed particularly at the British market. It was big business, and it was not necessarily run with quality in mind.

However in time, as palates became increasingly more sophisticated, those wines were shunned by the majority, and they started to disappear from the supermarkets.

In the 1980s young and dynamic winemakers started to take over the family estates, many of them having studied wine-making and travelled wine regions of the world to see other vinifying techniques. They set about repairing the worldwide damage that had been done to the reputation of German wines by starting to modernise, building new cellars, introducing new equipment, and they also began to plant international grapes such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer very successfully. Also red varieties such as Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon were cultivated alongside the more indigenous grape varieties such as Riesling and Sylvaner.

The winemakers are now the shining stars in wine production today, particularly in the Palatinate Region, that 80km stretch of land that is a continuation of the Alsace’s Vosges mountains from France, along the banks of the Rhine.

The climate here is much like that of Alsace and with it being one of the sunniest and driest of all wine regions in Germany one can indulge not only in an awe-inspiring array of beautiful handcrafted wines but also tropical fruits such as figs and citrus fruit and beautiful almond trees which are a sign of a mild climate. The vineyards are planted on various soil formations and a combination of sandstone and volcanic soil  and with the Mediterranean climate it is no wonder that beautiful wines are made here, full bodied, big and robust and there is almost no soil here that vines cannot be cultivated on.

Even the Romans discovered the advantages of such a mild climate by cultivating vines alongside the slopes of the Palatinate Forest. Roman cellars and pressing houses have been discovered in the region, and have made it a very rewarding destination for tourists of all interests, and not just for wine enthusiasts.

Wunderbar links:

www.germanwineagencies.co.uk

The German Wine Route

More on the Palatinate and other wine-growing regions

*UPDATE: following regional elections at the beginning of April, the newly-empowered Green Party has called a halt to the building of the bridge described in the blog below, so the Moselle is reprieved for a couple of years at least. But the access roads are completed, so locals believe the bridge will come. It’s just a question of when.

The Moselle in pictures is a prettier, cosier version of the Rhine. Not so many barges, and fewer castles, but dreamier, more flower-strewn and with more village life. Wonky half-timbered houses teeter along the riverbanks like old ladies who still insist on wearing their stilettos, rouged up with geranium windowboxes. Meanwhile their washing lines run up and down the adjacent hills supporting ancient vineyards, frilly with blossom early in the year, and then curtained in green as the summer progresses.

It’s a traditional landscape, and it has featured in poetry, prose and painting, but now it is at the centre of a row about progress not unlike the one that’s already simmering in the UK over the new London to Birmingham rail link. For there’s a new motorway bridge being built across the river valley at Ürzig, a small village just upriver from the tourist honeypot of Bernkastel-Kues, only about 20km west of Frankfurt’s Hahn airport.

The idea of this Hochmoselbrücke is to connect Frankfurt and Frankfurt Hahn with Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The bridge itself will be 480ft high and a mile long, and plans show it to be of no particular architectural distinction, unlike the motorway-bearing Millau Viaduct in France, which was designed by British architect Norman Foster and has become something of a tourist attraction in itself.

In fact on this occasion the British have been wheeled out to criticise the bridge’s construction, most noticeably in the shape of venerable wine writer Hugh Johnson, who criticised the ‘highway on stilts’ as a ‘great shadow of uselessness’ which will ‘banalise’ what is essentially a 17^th century landscape.

There’s a strong protest movement resisting the bridge, particularly as they fear it might affect the quality of the celebrated local Riesling, but it looks as if they’re fighting a losing battle as the construction cranes begin to loom over the river valley, peeping over the fringe into the landscapes they are about to uproot.

For the British visitor, and for Ryanair, the new bridge will mean that Frankfurt Hahn will become more of a hub for onward journeys westwards, and not largely eastwards towards Frankfurt, as at present.

But such convenience has its price. If you want to see the Moselle valley in its unsullied configuration, I’d recommend that you go there soon.

It’s one of those enduring clichés about Germany that is refusing to die, particularly in the UK: that German wine equals sweet Liebfrauenmilch  – usually mentioned with a smile of gentle deprecation. The truth, however, is very far removed from the stereotype, for German wine is one of the country’s success stories, in particular its Riesling varieties, praised by wine experts worldwide.

Sizewise, Germany can, of course, not compare itself with big players such as France. There’s simply not enough of it for worldwide export and the locals like to drink it themselves (apart from Blue Nun, of course). That in itself is enough reason to travel to Germany, particularly during the many wine festivals in summer and early autumn, but there’s also a new generation of young winemakers who are exploring organic wine-making and reinventing traditional grape varieties, giving wine a stylish new look.

There are altogether 13 different wine-growing districts. The biggest is the Rheinhessen region in the Rhineland-Palatinate with 26,000 hectares of vine. The smallest is in Saxony with 410 hectares. Other major wine areas are the Palatinate, Baden, Moselle, Franconia, Nahe and the Rheingau.

Rheinhessen

Germany’s biggest wine-growing district is synonymous with wine. Almost every village in the region between Alzey, Worms, Mainz and Bingen, is somehow involved with wine. Perfect weather conditions contribute to the quality of grapes here. Apart from Riesling, Silvaner is a traditional grape variety. Rheinhessen is also a good place to try some red wines, with one-third of the whole vineyard area now being covered with red grape varieties.

Young vintners are at the forefront of winemaking

Above all, what makes Rheinhessen so interesting is the generation of young vintners. One of the big talents is Carolin Kühling-Guillot who runs the Kühling-Guillot estate with her husband and is widely praised for her Pinot Noir. By the way, this is the original home of the (in)famous Liebfrauenmilch, first produced in the 18^th century with grapes from the vineyards of the Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in Worms.

In fact, after decades of criticism Liebfrauenmilch has been reborn, and the Gutzler vineyard has been successful in reintroducing it to the wine lists of some of Germany’s top restaurants.

Palatinate

This is a major destination for any wine lover not only because of the biggest wine festival worldwide taking place each year in Bad Dürkheim but also because of the German Wine Road which meanders from Bockenheim to the French border. Classical grape varieties prevail here, in particular Riesling but also Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. Renowned traditional wine-growing estates such Dr. Bürklin-Wolf, Reichsrat v. Buhl, Bassermann Jordan or Menger Krug, who have been in the wine-making business for centuries, plus a young and adventurous breed of winemakers such as Schneider in Ellerstadt who have a very individual take on labels – check it out! – and a knack for marketing.

Baden

Germany’s third biggest and most southerly wine district includes popular travel destinations such as the Black Forest, Lake Constance, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden or Freiburg. The area stretches for 400 km and consequently a wide variety of types of wines can be found. More sun than in other places in Germany determines the taste of the wines produced here, and it is the best place to find Pinot Noir.

Moselle

The Romans brought wine-making to the Moselle and left some of their wine presses here for visitors to see.  A lot of the wine grows in quite spectacular fashion on slopes along the Moselle, including the world’s steepest vineyard, Bremmer Calmont. Lots of options to combine wine tasting with hiking or cycling in one of Germany’s most picturesque spots.

Franconia

Famous for the pot-bellied bottle type, Bocksbeutel. The Müller-Thurgau grape variety is mostly grown here and has been updated by young wine-makers. Silvaner white wines are another specialty. Wine-growing is centred around the Baroque town of Würzburg, and the Main cycling track is a great way to explore the region from the wine perspective.

Nahe

The insider tip in the south-west, this wine-growing district along the Nahe river has a 2,000 year-old tradition of wine-making. Lots of Riesling, but also Rivaner, Silvaner and Burgundies. The region features spa towns such as Bad Kreuznach or Bad Münster am Stein, and there’s a nice wine road and cycling tracks along the Nahe.

Rheingau

The Rhine, by turning west near Wiesbaden and then heading north again 30 km later, created a perfect place for the 3,100 hectare Rheingau wine-growing district, famous for its Riesling. Assmannshausen is also particularly known for Pinot Noir.

There are more details on all German wine regions here: www.deutscheweine.de