It’s not just the Greeks who are fearful of the Germans. The wine producers of Alsace in eastern France have reason to be grateful to the German tourists who flock in to buy their wares, but they are starting to be seriously worried about the competition posed by Germany’s new generation of dry wines.
For a long time Alsace vintners had the dry Riesling field to themselves. Until recently the Germans made a completely different style of Riesling – light-bodied and fruitily sweet rather than the steelier, food-friendly versions for which Alsace has long been famous. But now that German summers are warmer, and fashion has led Germans to see sweetness as a cardinal sin, Riesling grapes can be persuaded to ripen sufficiently to make good dry German wines. So Germany is now the source of a significant amount of top-quality dry (trocken) Riesling, including some particularly sought-after examples labelled Grosses Gewächs.
The Alsatians are feeling the need to put a very obvious stake in the Riesling sand. They may grow all sorts of other grapes too – Gewürztraminer, Pinots of all shades, Sylvaner and a little bit of Muscat – but Riesling is their most planted and most revered variety. They feel as though the Germans have become just a bit too proprietorial about the increasingly fashionable Riesling grape (which the Austrians are also rather good at now).