Cabinet on (almost) everyone's lips

BEST OF: A comparison of sweet and noble sweet wines from Germany

The renaissance of Kabinett wines is probably not only due to the trend towards lighter wines that are easier to drink. For the qualities have also changed noticeably in recent years. Apart from the wines of a few specialists, in the past Kabinets were mostly nice-to-drink, slender, sweet, uncomplicated, but often also thin and meaningless everyday drinks that did not require much attention.

In the meantime, the picture looks quite different. "Today, we find many exciting, juicy and characterful Cabernets that have retained their filigree despite substance and expressiveness. They can still be drunk effortlessly on the side, but they have long since ceased to be reserved for supporting roles," says wein.plus tasting director Marcus Hofschuster. Almost inevitably, they only very rarely have the depth and complexity of higher ratings, "which is why we don't want to join the top rating carnival of some colleagues. But that doesn't detract from the pleasure they give - which is perhaps greater than ever," he adds. Wines of this style are unique worldwide anyway.

"Extremely concentrated and brilliantly pure"

The higher sweet and noble sweet predicates, on the other hand, seem to have fallen behind a little in the public eye. Yet 2018 is once again a first-class year, especially for high predicates, which are currently extremely concentrated and brilliantly pure in tone from the good producers. "Dessert wine fans should definitely stock up on 2018 wines," emphasises Marcus Hofschuster.

He evaluated almost 600 sweet and noble sweet wines of different grape varieties from Germany last year. For this BEST OF, we have taken into account all wines with 20 grams or more of residual sugar, which is why bottlings under the somewhat imprecise term "feinherb" (abbreviated to "fh" in the following) can also be found in our list.

The complete tasting results can be found here: https://magazin.wein.plus