A taste of Germany
September 29, 2015
"This is a perfect symbol for German unity," says Erik Schweickert.
The professor teaches international wine business at Geisenheim University, a college west of Frankfurt that specializes in horticultural science, beverage technology and the wine business.
Schweickert headed a 12-month project that involved hundreds of students, with the aim of finding and blending wines from all of Germany's 13 wine-growing regions in both west and east. Normally, blending wines from different regions is forbidden -after all, the wine-growers want different colors and aromas, he says, adding there is one exception to the rule that involves sugar content.
"We chose a wine from each region, and different kinds of businesses: bulk wine producers, bottle wine producers, organic wineries, cooperatives," Schweickert told DW. "We wanted to create a picture of the German wine business in its total."
Their "Einheitswein" (unity wine), a red and a white variety, was chosen as the official wine at the celebrations on Saturday in Frankfurt, to be presented to and tasted by German politicians and many foreign heads of government.
German blends
For the most part, the viticulture students themselves contributed the hardware, the professor explains: either the winery was owned by the students or their parents, or it was the students' internship host company, or a cooperative they belonged to. The 2014 vintage, professor Schweickert remembers, was "a challenge due to end of season rainfall." But in the end, he says, they found suitable wines - that is, wines that had not been "chaptalized", where no sugar was added.
Unification, red and white
In addition to providing wine for Germany's official unification celebration, the group sent bottles to the world's 100 top wine journalists and bloggers. "Reaction has been positive so far," Schweickert says.
It was a comprehensive learning process for the Geisenheim students, who not only chose and blended the wines, but also came up with the name for their product and designed the label for the white wine: a map of reunified Germany with the former border between East and West marked by a dotted line. The red wine bottle label, designed by a German artist, gives a more abstract view of reunification.