The Watch on the Wine

German wines, the conventional wisdom says, are sweet and should be served with dessert. This inaccurate belief has left some of the best German wines languishing on store shelves and wine lists. Thus prices for the best of them haven’t risen as fast as they would have in a more enlightened world.

The wine list at Knoll’s Black Forest is a happy surprise for the savvy wine buyer, laden with fine German wines that are dry and go well with food. Even better, their prices are very reasonable. Pricing, at between 2.0 and 2.5 times wholesale, is fair, with the German wines representing better value than the French or California wines. Most wines are between $20 to $30.

Ronald Knoll, son of the owners, has been responsible for the restaurant’s wine list for three years. Although Knoll’s has always had a large selection of German (and California wine), along with a smattering of French ones, Ronald has improved the German selection.

It was a labor of love.

“I worked in Germany for a year, for a restaurant in Munich, and I also did a seminar at the German Wine Academy in the Rheingau,” he said, adding that he spoke German from childhood.

He is now in the process of reorganizing the list to make it easier to use. “We’re going to divide the wines not by region, but by sweetness,” he said. Thus the driest wines (trocken and halb-trocken) will be listed first, and then the softer, sweeter wines (listed as “lieblich”).

He was prompted to do this because a number of excellent Spaetlese Trocken wines on the list have been confusing to many people. “When people see the word spaetlese , they think sweet, because that word has always been translated as ‘late harvest,’ which is technically accurate, and every California late harvest wine is sweet. But I have some Spaetlese wines that are trocken (dry), and all this means is you get a wine that is richer, fuller, with higher alcohol, maybe 11% to 12%. But it’s dry.”

Knoll recommends the 1983 and 1986 German wines as good wines; the ‘83s because they were bought when the German mark was lower priced than it now is, and the ‘86s because they appear to be coming around faster than the marvelous 1985s. He said the 1987s and ‘88s had very high acidity and are good food wines.

Knoll’s also offers some interesting wines rarely seen in restaurants such as barrique-style wines like Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and German Pinot Noir aged in small oak barrels. German red wines are lighter in color and style, and offer interesting aromas and flavors at reasonable prices. Look for important German names as Bert Simon, Fritz Haag and Robert Eymael.