(Manfred Klimek, animated image: runwayml)
These are the sort of cases I really don’t want to believe, because they fit the current situation in Germany all too well. Roman Niewodniczanski produces one of his finest wines in the Saar region – yet is not allowed to sell it as such. Not because the wine isn’t good enough. Not because it has any faults. But because it doesn’t fit the rules. No seal, no classification, no premium status. A top-class wine, formally downgraded. And this at one of the region’s most prominent estates, the Van Volxem Winery. And at one of the world’s most famous German vineyards: the Scharzhofberg – a legend!
You really have to let that sink in. Here’s someone standing in the vineyard with their team, working with precision, thinking beyond the norm, bottling a wine that has everything we could wish for – and then failing, not in the cellar, not on the market, but because of a form. A bloody form.
Because of regulations that dictate what a wine must be like before it’s even drunk. This isn’t a marginal phenomenon. It’s systemic. And it’s happening to a winemaker, of all people, who comes from a family of entrepreneurs who made their fortune with Bitburger beer and Gerolsteiner mineral water – in other words, from a background that understands markets, knows how to manage brands and knows how to position products. It is precisely this background that makes the case all the more remarkable.
Over decades, the German wine industry has built up a set of rules that promises security. Origin, style, classification – everything neatly organised, graded and controlled. This has its advantages. It provides guidance, trust and a sense of reliability. But there is also a downside. And this becomes apparent whenever someone steps outside this framework. When someone like Roman Niewodniczanski at Van Volxem makes a wine that is perhaps more deliberate, perhaps more precise, perhaps simply different from what was intended.
For the system does not primarily reward quality. It rewards conformity. And that is unsuitable in quality viticulture – unsuitable in general.
Those who stay within the lines get their seal of approval, their designation of origin, their marketing opportunity. Anyone who shifts these boundaries, even slightly, loses precisely that. And suddenly there is a wine that impresses in the glass but must remain silent on the label. No ‘Großes Gewächs’, no premium designation, no clear place within the system. It becomes invisible to the consumer. For the winemaker, it becomes economically more difficult. The fact that this happens to Roman Niewodniczanski of all people – who, alongside Van Volxem and a handful of others, stands for precision and ambition on the Saar like almost no one else – seems like a lesson in itself.
That is the real absurdity. A system designed to ensure quality actually prevents, in certain cases, the very quality it is meant to produce.
And it’s not just wine.
This form of over-regulation has long since become a background hum that pervades many areas of the country. Permits, regulations, responsibilities – everything is regulated, everything is safeguarded, everything is controlled. And at the same time, this gives rise to a sluggishness that does not foster innovation, but rather holds it back. Not loudly, not spectacularly. But it is constant. A state that has fine-tuned itself to such an extent that, in many areas, it administers more than it enables.
Winegrowing is a particularly good example of this, because here the consequences are so immediately apparent. Wine is not a theoretical product. It is right there in the glass. You can taste it, compare it, judge it. And if this wine is good – very good, in fact – then the discrepancy between the rules and reality becomes immediately apparent. This is precisely what the Van Volxem case illustrates.
I could say: well then, let the winegrower simply work outside the system. Many have been doing so for some time now. Regional wine, separate categories, new marketing approaches. But that is not a solution, particularly in the case of the Scharzhofberg. For the existing system remains in place. With all its market mechanisms, its visibility, its power.
Germany is good at building systems. Very good, in fact. But in doing so, it sometimes forgets what these systems are actually meant for. They are meant to enable, not to hinder. They are meant to organise, not to stifle.
Roman Niewodniczanski’s Scharzhofberger will still be drunk – there’s no doubt about that: the mountain’s name is too big in the wine world for that not to be the case. It will never tell the story of a failure. But, on a small scale, it will tell the story of Germany’s current failure.