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Persevere and Dreams Come True

What would you do if you had created the perfect sparkling wine - and then the good old German bureaucracy has put a spanner in the works?

  • “Blanc de Noirs as a wine name is not permitted in Germany. Please contact a higher authority. "
    Wilhelmshof Wein- & Sektgut

The same thing happened to my parents. They love sparkling wine and, after studying viticulture in 1972, they fulfilled their dream of making their own sparkling wine. It started with a classic Riesling, before they wanted to vinify a white sparkling wine made from red grapes based on the model of Champagne. In 1989 they made the first Blanc de Noirs in Germany from Pinot Noir grapes and submitted it three years later for an official test number to the Wine Authority. And then the bureaucracy monster struck. A light blue carbon copy came back: “Blanc de Noirs as a wine name is not permitted in Germany. Please contact a higher authority. "

A real smack! But my parents weren’t put off - after all, they had come this far and were not ready to give up their dream now. And so began a two-year correspondence with the Ministry of Economics and Viticulture, which over time filled many Leitz files. My father explained why the sparkling wine had to bear the internationally known name Blanc de Noirs, while the Ministry insisted that only German names should be on a German sparkling wine. The alternative proposal: white printing. It was absurd. It was only after my father's argument that "brut" was also French and was written on German labels, did the Ministry give in and finally changed the regulations. And my parents had officially created Germany's first Blanc de Noirs.

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