German wine guide.

Germany has a bipolar wine market. On the one hand, the most public face of its wine industry (and at this level it really is industry as opposed to agriculture) are the cheap, sugary, fruitless Liebfraumilch and other branded wines. These are of poor quality, and yet they are the first German wines most drinkers will come across, usually at the local supermarket. They hardly inspire the budding wine enthusiast to explore further, and they are the reason why many drinkers of everyday wines express surprise when I tell them of my love for German wine.

It is not these plonk wines, however, that I enjoy, but rather wines from a selection of producers that you are unlikely to find anywhere other than a specialist retailer. These wines are from the grand producers of the Mosel and Rheingau. German white wine leads the way, what reds are produced are of considerably less interest. When discussing German white wine the greatest are almost exclusively Riesling, although top producers may fashion good wines from less noble grape varieties (the reds are Pinot Noir, known in Germany as Spatburgunder). Just 100 years ago German white wine of this sort of quality was extremely popular. Widely regarded as the finest wines in the world, they sold for prices well in excess of the first growth chateaux in Bordeaux (and that's expensive!).

These wines are less prominent today because the German wine industry has a serious image problem. The downfall of German wine resulted from a number of factors, including German economic decline, two world wars, the introduction of brands focussed on quantity rather than quality, the use of lesser quality hybrid grapes such as Muller-Thurgau and, of course, the changing tastes of the consumer. Nevertheless, the top producers have continued in the background, consistently producing very fine wines, which frequently prove to be uneconomic to produce.

Germany’s wine terminology

Germany is often accused of having the most confusing, cluttered wine labels, yet in truth many of them are quite beautiful, and contain a wealth of information. All one has to do is see past the occasional use of Olde Worlde script, and get to grips with a few words of German.

There is much information that can be gathered from a German wine label. Each of the labels shown here clearly declare the vintage, the grape (Riesling), and that the wine originates from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. Looking in particular at Fritz Haag's label, this tells us that the grapes were grown in the Juffer-Sonnenuhr vineyard around the town of Brauneberg. The label gives us a few other pieces of information, but there are two snippets worth concentrating on: the Pradikat, and the AP number.

Progress in confectionery production.

Confectionery industry has a long history. It goes back into ancient times. It goes back into ancient times. It starts with the discovery of honey.

Ancient people learnt to mix honey with chopped fruit and nuts. It was a delicious sweetmeat. This was the first confectionery item in the world. When in the middle ages cane sugar was brought to Europe it was used for the production of sugar sweets.

Chocolate was first brought to Europe by the Spaniards in the 16th century. At that time it was used as a beverage. Later on the manufacture of chocolate candies was started in France. The first chocolate candies consisted of ground cocoa beans and sugar and were prepared by the mere mixing of these two ingredients.

The 17th century was a period of considerable progress in confectionery. Many new types of confectionery goods appeared. But till the end of the 18th century most of the processes in confectionery production had been carried out manually (by hand) or by water-driven machines. The invention of steam power engines by James Watt gave rise to the development of confectionery machinery as well.

Nowadays all the processes in confectionery production are done by machines. At a chocolate producing plant cleaning and grading machines free raw beans of foreign bodies, such as clay, metal, stone, fibre, etc.

Various roasters, fired by gas or coke, are usually installed at modern plants for roasting cocoa beans. Removal of shell and germ is also carried out by machines. The cocoa bean from which the shell and the germ were removed is called a nib. Nibs are fed into the hopper of a grinding mill which grinds them into a liquor. The liquor is pumped to a pressing machine for extraction of cacao-butter. At this stage of pro­duction cocoa powder can be made. If chocolate is to be produced the liquor is passed to the melangeurs or mixing machines (mixers) and some sugar is added to the mass.

The treatment of conching imparts very fine physical structure to chocolate and improves its taste. After conching the chocolate is moulded, cooled and wrapped. This procedure is almost entirely automatic at modern confectionery factories.