Despite being the fourth-largest wine region in Germany, Württemberg is not a name that often falls from wine lovers’ lips. This is, surprisingly enough, because it has pleasant weather. Württemberg, located in the south-west of the country, is warm, making it an ideal place to grow red grapes. However, the world looks to Germany for white wines, and Württemberg’s specialty grape, Trollinger, has fallen out of favour. Cultivated on steep, sunny slopes, it’s hard to grow and harvest, making it increasingly uneconomical.
Changes have been under way for a while but the unexpectedly large 2018 harvest is likely to accelerate them.
Bumper crop
Since the 1980s, Württemberg’s wine growers have exchanged high yields for better quality. The past ten years have also brought some disappointing harvests, with grapes hurt by frost or hail. Many expected the drought of 2018 to reduce yields further, but the opposite happened. There was a big harvest of near-perfect grapes.
Not only that, but Heilbronn – the city on the Neckar River which sits at the centre of the winegrowing region – will this year host the National Garden Show, one of Germany’s biggest tourist attractions. Heilbronn’s local producers have created a mock-up vineyard, a maze with sensory stations, dry-stone walls, a vineyard hut and rootstock vines, all with the aim of giving visitors a better understanding of Württemberg’s wine culture. The project put Karl Seiter, managing director of the Heilbronn cooperative winery, in a buoyant mood. “I’m assuming that we will reap long-term benefits from the hype surrounding the National Garden Show,” he says.
It’s too early to tell what effect the event will have, but any help is welcome. The regional specialities of Lemberger and Trollinger are not well understood outside of the state, so wineries have relied for sales on supermarkets, where the wines can be shifted in volume. And while there is a demand for Trollinger rosé, or for blends of Trollinger and Lemberger, Trollinger itself struggles from a poor image. While new plantings focus on Lemberger, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and new Cabernet varieties (Mitos, Cubin and Dorsa), Württemberg has yet to develop a reputation for these wines. As a result, the region’s wines are stuck on the bottom shelf. Dr Bernd Kost, managing director of the Stromberg-Zabergäu Winegrowers’ Association, says its biggest challenge is “increasing the market share held by domestic or Württemberg wines beyond the entry-level price sector”.
Friedrich Kern, managing director of the Wilhelm Kern family winery in Kernen-Rommelshausen, is of a similar view: “It will be a major challenge for Württemberg to make its name as a winegrowing region and establish itself in the national and international market.”
Christian Hirsch of the Hirsch private winery in Leingarten, on the other hand, is optimistic: “Other winegrowing areas definitely used to be ahead of us in terms of structure but that is changing all the time.”
Another problem facing the region is the loss of older consumers who used to buy one-litre bottles. Those people are disappearing, but nobody is rushing to replace them. “Unfortunately, in terms of quantity, the 750ml bottle does not yet compensate for what is lost in the litre sector,” says Axel Gerst, managing director of the Cleebronn-Güglingen Winegrowers’ Association. He says that while demand for white wines and rosés is steady or slightly increasing, demand for reds is falling. “In the next two years, we want to find a style that also appeals to the litre-buyers again,” he says.
Dr Kost agrees that the growing preference for white wine needs to be managed. “This would obviously appear to be an unfavourable market development. However, national demand for red wine is partially covered by red wine imports. This demonstrates that, despite tough competition, there are still opportunities to attract more consumers in Germany to wine from Württemberg.”
Convincing Germans to exchange international red wines for German wines is not the only task ahead. There is also the export market to convince as well. Lemberger could play a key role, with many considering it the variety with the greatest potential. “Lemberger certainly has a very good and, above all, universally accepted image in terms of dry and off-dry wines,” says Dr Kost, whose Stromberg-Zabergäu Winegrowers’ Association is the biggest producer of Lemberger.
Yet while it occupies about 15% of the region’s vineyard area, Lemberger only occupies third place in grape variety statistics. “We have so far remained very loyal to Trollinger, the leading Württemberg variety, which accounts for a third of the winegrowing area,” says Bastian Remkes, managing director of the Bottwartal Winegrowers’ Association. He believes there is a need to develop a modern style of Trollinger, “although we will virtually have to force our members to change their mindset. We have decided in our grape variety development plan to achieve a red-white ratio of 60:40, which will initially undoubtedly be at the cost of the Trollinger growing area.”
There are signs that minds are already changing. One such sign is the work being done by the young winegrowers’ association Wein.Im.Puls. It brings wine producers together from both cooperatives and private estates to create festivals and tastings. “The new generation intends to present a united front,” says Hirsch. “Individual businesses find it much more difficult to raise national awareness on their own. This is where it is an advantage for us to work together to create a united front with broader appeal.”
Many regions have such organisations, but what’s striking about Wein.Im.Puls is that it exists at all. Because Württemberg is dominated by cooperatives, wine growers who wanted to go out on their own used to face peer pressure to remain within the system. But as a new generation of winemakers graduates from educational institutes like Geisenheim, they have become more confident about making wine on their own account – and are happy to collaborate, including with colleagues from the cooperatives. Hirsch’s hope for the future is “that as many good wine businesses as possible pull together. More great wines from this area simply have to end up in glasses all over the country. The only logical consequence is that work needs to be done on the image.”
Vintage impact
Opinions in Württemberg differ about whether the bountiful 2018 vintage is a good thing or not. It is particularly surprising that the businesses which sell to supermarkets are delighted about the quantities, and not worrying about a possible price war. Dieter Weidmann, chairman of the Württemberg Winegrowers’ Central Cooperative, explains it like this: “Autumn 2018 only influences our marketing in the sense that we are now able to act and, above all, deliver in all areas. Prior to autumn 2018, we were virtually cleaned out.”
Marian Kopp of the Lauffen Winegrowers’ Association is also pleased. “Firstly, we are relieved to be able to deliver white wine,” he says. “Our rising Grauburgunder [Pinot Gris] sales would have led to a shortage if the harvest had been small in autumn 2018. We are also delighted with the initial consumer feedback about the 2018 white wines, which are of outstanding quality.”
Hans-Georg Schiller of Felsengartenkellerei Besigheim, which not only produces wine but organises distribution for other cooperatives, goes even further. “I think the 2018 vintage is certainly having a positive impact on our marketing. There are again sufficient quantities available for marketing – including white wine. The excellent quality of the 2018 vintage has given us the opportunity to win new customers.”
Overall, Württemberg harvested 38% more than in the previous poor year, to a total of 1.15m hl. But not everybody enjoyed the bounty, as some producers grappled with frost. Then there’s the question of what to do with the extra wine. “Fortunately, we were able to take control measures before autumn to ensure that we could harvest a fairly good quantity that would not needlessly increase our stocks,” explains Remkes. “Unfortunately, however, we are faced with a very jittery market, because large quantities are still in the cellars and these are now being sold off as special offers that sometimes make little financial sense. This obviously also hits us where it hurts and is also a clear indication of how price-sensitive the market is.”
One thing that stops most producers from undercutting each other is the high number of cooperatives, which exist in a two-tier system. The first tier simply produces. The second both produces and distributes on others’ behalf, so it’s not in their interests to start a price war.
What they do find difficult, however, is raising prices. But Kern of the Wilhelm Kern winery thinks new price points are “not urgent. Good prices can still be achieved with high-quality wines and authentic communication, even in a highly competitive market. Wines at entry-level prices, which are important in terms of volume, will continue to experience a downward trend in our opinion.”
The role of the cooperatives
Although cooperatives represent the majority of wine producers in the region, the system is beginning to show signs of strain, and not just because younger producers are setting out on their own. At the beginning of this year, the Stetten Winegrowers’ Cooperative split from Remstalkellerei, a second-tier cooperative. Kellerei Wilhelm Kern, a private family-owned estate, set tongues wagging when it offered Stetten’s members the chance to join its producer association. “With the Stetten winegrowers, we intend to produce our own product line, which will highlight the special winegrowing characteristics of Stetten in the region, including by means of joint events,” says Kern. He says that his organisational structure can react more quickly to the needs of wine growers. “Our operational procedures are optimised using a carefully coordinated harvest plan, winegrower-friendly pressing times and an efficient winemaking process on the production side. In addition to a fair payment system, we can also offer reliable marketing.”
Remkes believes that winegrowers’ cooperatives have communication problems: “The current challenge for all cooperatives – which have been stuck in the past – is mainly to improve the image of cooperatives with their reliable and good to very good quality,” he says. “There is a lot of pioneering work to be done here, because it is amazing that label names featuring a vineyard, castle etc, or with a label design referring to an actual person, are much more popular than a label for wine produced by a cooperative which states the wine’s origin openly and honestly. This is often and increasingly not the case with the aforementioned labels with their very large quantities.”
Kopp wants to move away from entry-price wine: “In a stagnating wine market, it is more and more important to increase wine sales and income for producers and the wine trade by creating concepts that add value.”
Weidmann of the WZG disagrees that cooperatives in general face problems. “The total stock figures and sales figures for the Württemberg winegrowers’ cooperatives available to us give no indication of general problems,” he says, though he notes that “consolidated data can clearly not be used to draw conclusions about the situations of specific businesses. In our opinion, the 2018 vintage does not present the Württemberg winegrowers’ cooperatives with insoluble problems.”
Even if marketing remains the key success factor, Weidmann does not want to lose sight of costs: “The biggest challenge in the next few years will be for the winegrowing region of Württemberg to manage cost increases in winegrowing.” Still, he says, the landscape means production costs will remain high, while there is little room to move on price.
Nature’s bounty
Even if there are still concerns in Württemberg, the vintage gives many reason to celebrate, including Hirsch, who calls it “a stroke of luck”. “Lemberger is the winner among all the traditional grape varieties in Württemberg. After maturing for 18 to 24 months, lots of great wines will be released in the foreseeable future.”
As far as VDP winegrower Rainer Schnaitmann is concerned, 2018 was virtually perfect: “At the top, there are exciting, long-lasting red wines while the basic red wines are very good value for money. The white wines are far, far better than in the last hot year of 2003. There’s no comparison.”
Thanks to the remarkable 2018 vintage, Württemberg could be a winner.
