Italy

What can one say about Italy as a wine country? In any case, it is striking that the sea has a major influence on the wine regions. Furthermore, separated by the Apennines that run from Milan to Naples. So different from France where almost all wine regions are located along rivers

And there is something striking to note: All regions produce wine! And slightly more white grapes are grown than red ones. And although the famous Barolos come from the north, wine growing started in Sicily and Calabria and has slowly spread north.

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France

The wine regions are all located on rivers. This is all the more striking because the grape vines in Italy, for example, are subject to influence from the sea. The Loire, for example, rises just west of Valence in the far south and then flows north parallel to the Rhône, which descends to the south. The French think they invented viticulture, but the Georgians came before them and the Romans put viticulture on the map everywhere they went. France has many appellations due to the many small terroirs. Burgundy alone has more than all of them
appellations of Spain.

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Spain


To summarize the history of wine growing in Spain in a few words is not an easy task. This is partly due to the presence of the Moors for about four hundred years. Well, then it's not drinking wine but eating currants.
The regions also differ very much from each other. Compare, for example, Rias Baixas in the north and Jerez in the south: a world of difference. Dry areas in the south and more temperate in the north. For example, the course of the 950 km long River Ebro, which winds from the Basque Country to Rioja (which was for a long time the only area with the highest DOQ classification) and then plunges into the Mediterranean Sea, creates a microclimate favorable to wine growing. .

Among Madrid La Mancha, for a long time the largest supplier of bulk. But who has heard about the Toro wine region, for example? Small is beautiful. Because these regions are not holiday areas, people probably do not know them. This is different in France because the wine regions are 'on the route'.

There is more to discover in Spain. I did this by chance a few years ago in an area below the Sierra Nevada (make no mistake about the size and height of this mountain range) in Laujar de Andarax, a wine grower, organic too, at an altitude of 1000 meters: Cortija El Cura. It's not even mentioned in the overviews of Spanish wine regions, but what a wine! In other words, there is still a lot to discover in Spain, more than in France and Italy.

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Germany

Germany is undeniably good as a wine country, but I often heard, and only from the Dutch actually, that people thought negatively about German wines without being able to provide any motive or argument, so it is time that “we” let this go.

I learned to drink wine in Germany, but again at the Winzer itself. How about the Kaiserstuhl? And the Mosel area has fantastic wines. Have a Müller-Thurgau in the cellar from 1998! Pure class and not yet in decline. Why? Made by a passionate winemaker who took the long road to making wine. His approach is called slow-wine. Weingut Johannes Schneider.


The advancing Romans took care of the vines just like everywhere else and chose Riesling. Grows along steep slopes
slopes of the Rhine and its tributaries. I was once in Franconia, you remember those Bocksbeutels. I could barely keep my balance on those steep slopes: 2 rows of vines and then another step higher. You can easily get dizzy.

People always think: Germany is white, but still 35% is red. This is mainly due to the Dornfelder, an indigenous red grape and the Pinot Noir, locally called the Spätburgunder.

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