URGENT NEWS: Please click here to read about a major threat to the Mosel.
Here's some websites you may find useful:
www.winepage.de. An English-language website run by Dr. Peter Ruhrberg. Very useful.
www.vdp.de. The website of the Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter, with an English section and links to many top wine-maker's websites.
www.bernkasteler-ring.de. The website of the Bernkasteler Ring, the oldest association of quality winegrowers. German language only, unfortunately. Again, with links to many top winemaker's websites.
www.germanwine.net. The website of Rudi Weist, the US importers of several fine estates, with useful but often wildy over-optimistic vintage reports.
www.skurnikwines.com. The website of another US importer of German wines, with notes and vintage reports written in a rather strange, very wordy and highly idiosyncratic style by Terry Thiese. Interesting nonetheless.
www.timelesswines.com. Another US importer of fine German wines. No vintage reports as far as I can see, but useful for those in America.
www.billingtonwines.com. Another US importer of fine German wine, with interesting profiles of several estates worth looking out for.
www.inaba-wine.co.jp. A Japanese importer of fine German wines.
www.ultimowinecentre.com.au. An Australian importer of fine German wines.
www.germanwinesdirect.org The only place on the internet for info on buying wine direct from the winemaker...
Here's some books I've found useful:
The Wines Of Germany, by Frank Schoonmaker and Peter M. F. Sichel
First written in 1956 by Frank Schoonmaker, the massive changes to the German wine law in 1971 made this book obsolete, but it was successfully revised in 1983 by Peter Sichel, and is written in beautiful English, despite the fact that both the authors were American. Many of the recommendations in this book still hold true today, which is quite an acheivement. This book has been out of print for many years, but is still available secondhand from Amazon. I take it with me whenever I visit the wine regions, and am now on my fourth copy...
The World Atlas Of Wine, by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson.
Good text allied to stunning high detail maps make this book a winner. The maps even show many of the small roads through the vineyards, and athough it's probably illegal I take a photocopy of the relevant maps whenever I visit the wine regions, it's THAT useful.
Here's a link to an English translation of the poem Mosella by Roman poet Ausonius:
www.archive.org/details/deciausonius01ausouoft
And finally, nothing to do with wine, but here's a review of my least favourite German product: T-Mobile mobile broadband.
Truly appalling. Unless you use it a 3-6 AM you're unlikely to get more than phone line speed, and often much slower than that, even. Quite frankly this is a con trick. It's highly unreliable, dramatically overpriced for what you get, and is a fraud - salesmen promise you that it will be 2 Megabit - or even 3.6 megabit - per second. It's somewhere near that for the first 2-3 months, then they slow you down to phone line speeds or less. If you are one of T-Mobile's victims, please contact me here to see if we can sue these crooks.
Rating: 1/20 I for one will never have anything to do with T-Mobile ever again. They are crooks, plain and simple.