Federal Wine Award: The DLG causes irritation

You are right in assuming that only very few of the wineries that were part of the "top-100" of the best DLG-wine producers are actually known outside of Germany. After all, the German elite, which indeed earned its good reputation in the international field, completely ignores this allegedly significant contest. We are talking about the VDP (Association of German Praedikat Wine Estates) and its almost 200 members. Even there you will find a couple of vintners that don't deserve to be part of the association, but way too many that actually produce first-class wines. And of all these, you can find hardly anyone that took part in this competition.

There is only VDP members that took part (The Franconians Horst Sauer, Juliusspital, the Baden Andreas Laible and the Rhinegau Georg Müller-charity). Even considering all of the participants and their wines, you can't even find 10 wineries that are members of the VDP. This is only about two percent with 384 participating wineries. The DLG claims that this event is an open event that allows all participants to present their wines, which they don't have to do, however. There used to be at least 25 percent of producers that were actually part of a noble club. Not anymore though.

The DLG is pretty cheeky in calling its event a move from "leading quality tests for German wine producers" to a "fair testing for German wine qualities". It is safe to assume that all the tastings are fair and there is no cheating, however, it is also a known fact that the jury members are not quite choosy and award simple wines with gold, silver and bronce. Even with a "gold extra" you will not see a top quality wine. Every now and then you will ask yourself why an excellent wine receives the same recognition as an unimportant boring wine. This is probably one of the reasons why most of the producers of top wines do not, or not anymore, take part.

Apparently the jurors are scared of a thorough selection and probably they don't even have the necessary potential to do this. 5300 wines and bubblies participated, 4338 medals were handed out. This is simply too much, but it makes the participants happy, who get a nice reward for paying for this joke. The awards that are printed on the bottles, are even supposed to be a guarantee for good wines. According to the DLG, surveys had proved this. But who asks the consumers that automatically avoid a DLG-medal on a bottle?

What should critical consumers think about an award "Vintner of the year", who was able to "work his way up" in the DLG-ranking from 73 to 65 this year but for his total work received a gold medal in the Federal Competition? The Palatinate VDP will definitely not consider offering membership to the Winery Anselmann. And the Gault Millau will also not look at this competition and move Anselmanns from category six "further recommendable" to the first category. Thus, the DLG-vintner of the year is not even among the best 650 producers that are in this category.

Also very irritating is the DLG and its titel "Germany's best junior vintner", which is awarded within the same competition and which is basically a nice idea, since it puts junior vintners in the spotlight. You have to pay very close attention to the press article to find out that it was not the quality of the wines that was tested, but rather the expert knowledge and wine sensors of the participants. The winner, 25-year-old Ilonka Scheuring from Franconia, promises "wines with appeal and charisma", however, if quality had played a role in the competition, she would have been way behind Nr. 2 (Gerd Bogert from Rhinehesse)  and Nr. 3 (Boris Birkert from Wuerttemberg). The latter, who can be proud of his large collection and his last year's move to the grape-category of the Gault Millau, is certainly not what you would expect as a "junior vintner" with his 35 years and 10 years-past winemaking training...(r.knoll)