Saturday, October 22, 2005

Innovation in German wines

As even a cursory perusal of this site will tell you, we love German wines. Here's an interesting article on some of the innovations in German wine-making currently in progress.

We're particularly taken with the picture illustrating the use of a glass stopper instead of a cork. That's a new one on us!

The pertinent passage:

Embracing new trends doesn't mean having to forego tradition. Hans-Josef Becker uses many of the same techniques as his grandfather. At the same time, he's not afraid to tinker. He was the first German grower to use glass stoppers instead of corks.

"It's really easy to remove the glass stopper," Becker said. "And you can close it again so that you can put the bottle in the refrigerator."

Becker decided to switch to glass stoppers because of the declining quality of natural corks: the more delicate a wine is, like the dry Rieslings in his region, the more sensitive it is to unpleasant aftertastes or changes that can come about because of the cork. The glass stoppers have helped avoid spoiled bottles and won over customers.


Interesting. We wonder if we'll see any of these glass-stoppered wines over here?

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