Wine law and regulations
Wine Law New regulations in German wine law
On 27 January 2021, the 10th Act amending the Wine Act came into force. The amended law provides the framework for stronger profiling of the origin of German wines. Further details are regulated by the amendment to the Wine Ordinance, which was published in the Federal Law Gazette Part I No. 20 of 7 May 2021. The new regulations are binding from the 2026 vintage, until which time quality and Prädikat wines can still be labelled and marketed in accordance with the previously applicable regulations.
The closer the origin, the higher the quality promise
In future, the origin of the grapes will be decisive for the quality of German quality and Prädikat wines. After all, wine is a flavourful reflection of its origin. The German quality system is thus modelled on the Romance model and follows the principle of "the closer the origin, the higher the quality". The basic idea behind this is that the characteristics of a wine are determined in a special way by its origin, the terroir on which the vines grow. The concept of terroir encompasses the interplay of the factors of climate, soil and location, including the producer, who allows the origin to be tasted in the wine. The concept of origin refers to entire wine regions and quality wine regions as well as more narrowly defined regions, localities or individual vineyards.
The existing Prädikat levels from Kabinett to Trockenbeerenauslese remain unaffected by the new wine legislation.
New pyramids of origin
With the new wine legislation, a more differentiated pyramid of origin was created based on the previous quality pyramid. The "German wine" forms the basis of this pyramid, followed by the regional wines with a protected geographical indication (PGI) and the quality and predicate wines above it with a protected designation of origin (PDO).
Four-stage pyramid of origin
Within the PDO wines, there is now another four-level pyramid of origin. Wines whose grapes can come from the entire wine-growing region form the basis here. At the next level are the wines from defined areas or the former large vineyards, which now also have to be labelled with the term "region". The level above this includes wines whose grapes come from a single municipality or district and at the top are the single-vineyard wines, which express the terroir of the respective individual vineyard in a special way. It is also possible to indicate smaller geographical units within a single vineyard on the label, provided these so-called cadastral vineyards or Gewannen names are entered in the vineyard register. For the first time, the new German Wine Ordinance standardises and regulates the terms Großes Gewächs and Erstes Gewächs within single-vineyard wines. Their use is only possible in compliance with strict criteria and is intended to strengthen the top quality of German wines of origin.