Thanks to the alcoholic fermentation, wine is a biologically stable product and therefore hygienic. Even children got in the Medieval wine to drink. However, the really good grape wine remained a drink for the upper layer and the clergy. The people mostly drank lesser wines, stretched with water. Wine transformed over the centuries into a popular trading estate, which was driven by the Hanseatic League. Also for the medicine, the “blood grape” was always interesting. Long, wine was considered restorative trunk, reawaken your spirits and is good for the blood.
In the monasteries, immense wine was drunk but also produced. Long time the monasteries were important production sites in the wine world. When were driven in the year 1400 by the country gentlemen wine tariffs and duties, this triggered great anger at the wine growers, because they had to work hard for the production. The wine reached its largest spread but around 1600. Cultivation in Germany is stretched on an area of more than 300,000 hectares. 2/3 Of the vineyards in Germany were destroyed with the thirty years war.
But not only the war, climate change, the improved production of beer and the increase of wine imports were reasons for the reduction in the vineyards. The quality of the wine through the monasteries, which had provided their knowledge and their experience to the wine increased in the 18th century. “” At that time many of the still valid quality characteristics, such as for example the predicate names appeared Cabinet”, late harvest”and selection”. The turning point and came to the high-quality wine after Napoleon’s conquest 1801. This abolished the wine by the Church in the left-Bank territories. The new owners put high value on the quality of wine and quickly led the German wines to international success. As in the 19th century, the phylloxera of America was introduced, the fright was first. There could be but found a remedy, to halt the destruction by the louse: grafting of own vines on resistant American vines. By the new creation of vines in certain areas, particularly appropriate areas crystallized for the wine out. These are still the areas for the German wine-growing. The research progressed further during this time and it became more and more wine knowledge through exchanges with other countries, and other sciences. “These were, like the very popular German wine, successfully in other countries, especially the countries of the so-called new world”, such as Australia or Chile, distributed. In the 1970s tractors and other heavy equipment were used for the wine for the first time. To keep this low working time, pulling the vines in wire systems. At this time a new German wine law, which should primarily promote the quality of German wines and ensure results. The irregular part wine labels are now clearly laid down. Since 1990 is considered increasingly environmentally friendly measures in the wine. If the many innovations, which brings about the chemical – and bio-industry, have advantages, so many winemakers have realized yet that wine is a natural product as before, which the best is if you let it ripen the best, friendly circumstances. The use of chemicals and pesticides is critical since then and applied no longer easily. Near-natural wine is on the rise. Many winemakers go back in the technology a few steps and let nature take its course. However the large enterprises and cooperatives benefit from the achievements of the last centuries of the research.
