Regional Fermentation: Politics and Culture in the Making of German Wine at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Following unification in 1871 the German wine industry was positioned to profit from the centralization of administrative, legal, and political policies.  National tax and toll agreements as well as universal regulations on the production of wine promised to heal the wounds of the marked regionalism that had hitherto wracked the stability and even trustworthiness of German vintners.  In the face of this opportunity however, new problems emerged that made forgetting the splintered past impossible.             Since the 1840s German vintners in the Pfalz and Baden-Württemberg—which had the advantage of an extended ripening season—accused their northern neighbors on the Mosel of artificially manipulating their wines to compensate for their searing acidity.  Decades of battling back and forth finally led to the forced intervention of the Reichstag in in the 1870s.  Nevertheless, even after codifications of policy in 1879 and then again in 1882, the problem of artificially improving wine worked to pull the fragile unity amongst vintners apart. 

Even a national rivalry in the form of French competition had its domestic and more bitter counterpart. While French wine producers attacked German vintners for allegedly misappropriating French technology and terminology, German vintners similarly sought to protect their own distinctively local traditions and reputations from other Germans. The result—although probably unintended—was the creation and belief in perceived localized tasting phenomena; or what wine critics today call terroir.            The formation of a German national identity was a contested and difficult process in many areas.  In the wine industry the growing pains were particularly complex because of the long tradition of regionalized and even class-based associations.  The case of German vintners provides a fresh and yet unexplored angle on the difficulties of creating a German identity that transcended regional differences.