German wine dry and sweet

A recurring theme on these pages is the schizophrenic nature of German wine at the moment, whereby in its homeland it is almost all bone-dry while foreign importers have been slow to embrace any German wines other than the traditionally sweetish. Here are some rather heart-rending comments from a German wine producer who, like most, tries to satisfy these two very different markets.

Our first UK importer buys only traditional wines. We have not been using any healthy (non-botrytised) grapes for the sweet wines in the last few years. We need these Riesling grapes for the dry ones. So in...