Rhineland Wine-Sales
By T. A. LAYTON Sampling takes place a fortnight before the sale, a special day being allocated to the brokers, and another one to the public, who hardly count. The brokers receive 4 per cent. buying-commission from the wholesalers, for whom they act, and they earn every penny they receive. When the sales are not in progress, they have to tear up and down the country getting cask-wine samples, which they send off to the wholesale buyers. When a sale is made, theirs is the responsibility of telling the peasant how to treat the wine, and when to bottle it. The cask has also to be sealed, so out of the broker's bag comes a nail, which is driven into the bung at the top of the cask, and a piece of sealing-wax, which is melted over the nail so that no wine can be extracted without breaking the seal.
But the wine-sales are easier for him ; the growers' samples are all brought into the village for him to taste. Take Hallgarten, for example—the most completely wine-absorbed village on the Rhine. It contains the cellars and tasting-halls of three co-operative wine- growers' unions. The names of the first two are unusual. The larger growers got together and decided to become co-operative in 1900. They would not let the smaller growers participate ; so they were dubbed the " English," because during the Boer War this country had the reputation of being rich and powerful. Then the smaller growers built other premises for themselves, and because they were small they called themselves the " Boers " ; and these two names have remained officially till this day. The third is " German." And on a Wednesday at the beginning of June there were assembled just over 200 different samples of 1948 and 1949 wines which had to be tasted.
The broker is handed a catalogue which shows the number and name of the wine, its cask-number with a couple of spar,: spaces for his comments to be written in, and the taster's remarks With a fair amount of recent practice I have been able to increase the number of Hocks I can taste and memorise from about fifteen to forty, but the broker has to do the whole 200, for his livelihood depends on his palate. At long tables the wines are set out, and in front of each is stencilled a number which corresponds to the same number printed in the catalogue. Along the table he moves, sipping with a little bubbling sound as he draws air into his mouth with the wine, the better to form his impressions ; then a spit, and the wine goes into a sawdust pail ; the floor remains dry, for the pail is never missed. Each wine receives some comment—" Out of condition," " Spring sickness," " Too old in cask, needs bottling quickly," " Needs blue fining," " Too much acidity," " Not enough acidity "—and also the price which his wholesaler will probably have to bid up to. But though his mind is made up, he will have another chance to taste all the wines again on the day of the sale.
The most important sale of all the year takes place in the great halt above the State wine-cellars at Kloster Eberbach. This really is an event. and the scene is impressive. Beneath great whitewashed pillars are oblong tables with bench-seating for over 450 people. On the tables are large printed white cards with the names of the
various brokers and the number of guests they are allowed to invite ; beside the cards are great handsome green vases which as the auction ro resses et fuller and fuller with wine which the progresses
buyers tip from their glasses as the next sample is poured out. Outside there is a radio-van, for this particular sale is being broad- cast to German listeners.
The young auctioneer is very good indeed ; he opens with a speech praising the wines, and hoping the auction will proceed quickly, and then adds a few remarks which put everyone in a good humour. He pushes up the bidding fairly speedily, and does not wait too long to knock the casks down, for there are no fewer than 650 lots (the catalogue at Kloster Eberbach is seventy pages) to be sold, finishing with a Steinberger Cabinet 1943 Trockenbeeren Auslese, and this means that not only each bunch, but almost each grape from each bunch, has been picked off by hand at the last possible moment in the late autumn. The price will be fantastic, because every smart restaurant over the world has got to have a few bottles of it to round off the hocks on its wine-list.
During the sale (as distinct from the sampling days, which took place beforehand) 2,000 bottles are opened for tasting, though not all is drunk, and what is poured into the big green vase-like jars is distilled to make German brandy. Forty sips are got from each bottle, and 2,600 glasses have to be used. The pouring is done by thirty to forty cellarmen dressed in immaculate white, who pour with great rapidity, never spilling a drop. At intervals between the bidding, women, also in white uniforms, come round with huge wicker baskets slung under their arm and offer crisp rolls at a cost of 2.1d. each. The auctioneer sometimes sips wine and some- times is brought coffee. Anyway he earns his money—one mark for each lot he puts up to auction and two per mille of the takings.
The wines are sold in half-stocks of 600 litres each. Sometimes with the finer wines, the price will go higher than a wholesaler can afford, and then signs from brokers are flashed, by hand, across the hall, which means that the stuck is to be shared.
On the whole, the good English wholesaler is as good a taster as the German or better, even though the latter has been in the district all his life. For he comes to the tasting with a fresh palate, and often seems aware of undertones of taste and smell which might mar the wine when it finally gets into bottle. He has, too, certain other factors to take into account, which the German wholesaler has not. First is the question of what it will taste like over in England. It must be sweeter and fuller than hocks are usually drunk in Germany, but the growers are aware of this, and by German wine-making laws they may " improve " certain (lower grade) wines by the addition of sugar. The English buyer must be able to detect how much has been used, and decide whether or not it will produce a flabby wine when it gets to England.
But by far the biggest decision which he has to make is whether to bring it to England in cask or get it bottled on the spot. Owing to the presence of tongue-prickling carbonic gas, German wines are the trickiest in the world to bottle, and the greatest care must be taken that they get no contact with air when they pass from cask to bottle. Few English cellarmen can cope with this, so it is often the practice to pay for a German expert to supervise the bottling whenever a larger parcel of fine wine than usual is shipped over in cask. The alternative is to play for safety and ship in bottle, but when Sir Stafford Cripps in April of 1949 gave a drastic reduction on light wines shipped in cask, but made no concession for cased wine, he virtually forced wholesalers to bottle all their wines in London.
The auctioneer announces the next lot ; four hundred sips are poured out. The London wholesaler tastes it. Will it stand the journey ? If it does and he bottles it on a cool day in October or November, with the atmosphere just right, then he will be as much as forty shillings a dozen under his competitors. He nods to his broker, who bids again.
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