German and Austrian wines plus French liberté

Tasters gathers at the Signature Wine Show pre-Prowein

A refreshingly dogma-free, wide-ranging array of wines from the annual Haut Les Vins tasting pre ProWein.

In a bit of unintended irony, the 2023 Haut Les Vins wine tasting was held in Düsseldorf’s Industrieclub. The wines, by contrast, were anything but industrial. The group is part of the Signature Wine Show, a trade-only tasting organised by Germany’s Cologne-based Sommelier Consult that has established itself as the unofficial and ‘natural-leaning’ kick-off to the ProWein trade fair.

Haut Les Vins was founded in 2007 by Laurence Texier of Eric Texier wines in France’s Rhône Valley – born, as the best things...