Rated in this way wein.plus

Tasting and editorial director Marcus Hofschuster has an outstanding reputation as a conscientious and incorruptible wine critic. He tastes wines from all regions of Europefor wein.plus , and always according to identical quality and tasting standards.

Currently wein.plus 2,181 classified wineries with professional descriptions and ratings of wines 150,592 Wines are published. Producers and wines are updated and added to every working day.

The ratings of wein.plus are among the most reliable in the industry. They are comprehensible and repeatable

Our rules:

1. Every wine is exclusively tasted blind. During the evaluation, the taster never knows which wine from which producer is in the glass.
2. All wines are tasted in a neutral tasting room in Erlangen to minimise distracting influences. In contrast to other wine guides, wein.plus completely excludes the evaluation of wines at trade fairs or at the producer's premises.
3. To secure the ratings, regular counter-tastings take place in which wines are tasted that have already been tasted before.
4. There are only so many tastings per day that plenty of time and quiet can be guaranteed for each individual wine. Very many wines are also tasted at least twice in order to also take into account their development in the air.
5. All tasters have many years of experience and taste full-time.

In recent years, we have observed an upward shift in point scores throughout the wine industry and tasting media. Wines that used to be rated at 85 points would now tend to get 90 points and more.

We, on the other hand, continue to use the original, stricter grading, which allows for much better differentiation. That is why at wein.plus the recommendable wines already start at 80 WP.

Each wine rating contains a prognosis about the best drinking period under normal storage conditions. However, many wines remain in good shape even beyond this period. We just do not want to guarantee that they will continue to develop positively. Especially with ideal storage, however, the period of development can be significantly prolonged.

In contrast to the point rating, which is supposed to represent the actual quality of a wine as neutrally and objectively as possible, the "favorite wine" is a completely subjective award for the wines that taste best to us personally.

favorite wine are the finest and most interesting wines for us in their style, category and price range. We would also buy them for ourselves at any time.

To the favorite wine

wein.plus scores according to the internationally accepted 100-point system, which is borrowed from the American school grading system. We use the abbreviation WP = wein.plus-pointsin our scoring system.

Marcus Hofschuster

is tasting and editorial manager at wein.plus.

Already as a teenager, he began to deal intensively with the subject of wine. In the following decades, he acquired profound knowledge of the world of wine through travel and countless tastings.

During his time as a wine merchant in Schwabach and Nuremberg, he came up with the idea of a comprehensive guide to the best German and international growths, which he put into practice in 1999: he gave up the wine trade and has since devoted himself exclusively to tastings at wein.plus, which he has made into a firm authority in European wine criticism in over 20 years.

With his strict evaluation system, his thorough and uncompromising tasting practice and his incorruptibility, Marcus Hofschuster sets standards for serious tasting in terms of actual wine quality.

Kim Schreiber

was born in Nuremberg and grew up in Eckental-Eschenau in Middle Franconia. As a trained hotel manager and sommelier, she worked in various Bavarian hotels and top restaurants, including Vue Maximilian, Tantris and Rilano No.6 in Munich. More