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This chapter presents a conversation with a winemaker from Germany: Raimund Prüm of S. A. Prüm. The Romans first planted vineyards in Trier, Germany, as early as during the second century bc. Winemaking flourished in Germany from the Middle Ages, when monastic communities and feudal lords controlled huge swaths of vineyards and food crops. Germany currently produces a small amount of red wine, with Riesling as the country's dominant grape. The hardy, frost-resistant varietal does extremely well in a climate with the short hours of sunlight and cool nights of Germany and Alsace. The Mosel, one of thirteen Riesling regions, produces wines from some of Germany's best vineyards and is considered the Riesling benchmark. One of the Mosel's top wineries is S. A. Prüm, headed by Raimund Prüm.

Specialized wines will have often have passed through similar sequences of grape maturation, harvest, and fermentation (which may or may not be carried to completion) typical of more normal wines but are, nonetheless, treated somewhat differently. Wines developed for shipment, such as Port, Madeira, and Sherry, discussed here, and wines developed from grapes infected with the fungal ascomycete known as Botrytis cinerea (aka the Noble Rot), wines produced from frozen grapes (Ice wine), and wines produced from grapes similar to those grown in the Champagne region of France and destined to become “sparkling wines,” to be discussed subsequently, are all slightly different from the general types already described. And yet, because the compounds initially found in the grapes enjoy the same precursors and are doubtlessly very similar save for their terroir and their individual genomic and epigenomic differences, all but the final treatments they undergo are somewhat similar. Indeed, in that vein, Port and Madeira wines apparently originated in Portugal and Sherry in Spain, and the preferred grapes from which the preferred beverages are made continue to grow in and or near the initial locations. Other growing regions do try, with greater or lesser success, to create similar beverages. Port, Sherry, and Madeira wines are all called “fortified” beverages. They are generally higher in alcohol content and other flavorings than those produced by typical fermentation processes and have one or two additional steps that are associated with their processing. The first step involves producing a “distilled beverage.” In this process a portion of the wine produced in the usual way by fermentation is subjected to the process of distillation in the presence of air. In that process the wine is heated above the temperature at which it vaporizes (different components vaporizing at different temperatures) and then the vapors produced are removed, condensed, and separated from the residue. Low- boiling materials such as water (H2O, the major constituent of wine), methyl alcohol (methanol [CH₃OH] of which there are traces), acetaldehyde (ethanal [CH₃CHO] produced by oxidation of ethanol), and perhaps surprisingly, ethyl alcohol (ethanol [CH₃CH₂OH]), as well as other low-boiling components (e.g., some esters) are removed.

In reality, there can be no generic definition of an “ideal soil” because a soil’s performance is influenced by the local climate, landscape characteristics, grape variety, and cultural practices and is judged in the context of a winegrower’s objectives for style of wine to be made, market potential, and profitability of the enterprise. This realization essentially acknowledges the long-established French concept of terroir: that the distinctiveness or typicity of wines produced in individual locations depends on a complex interaction of biophysical and human cultural factors, interpreted by many as meaning a wine’s sense of place. As discussed in “Soil Variability and the Concept of Terroir” in chapter 1, because of this interaction of factors that determine a particular terroir, it is not surprising that no specific relationships between one or more soil properties and wine typicity have been unequivocally demonstrated. While acknowledging this conclusion, it is still worthwhile to examine how variations in several single or combined soil properties can influence vine performance and fruit character. These properties are: • Soil depth • Soil structure and water supply • Soil strength • Soil chemistry and nutrient supply • Soil organisms Provided there are no subsoil constraints, the natural tendency of long-lived Vitis vinifera, on own roots or rootstocks, to root deeply and extensively gives it access to a potentially large store of water and nutrients. In sandy and gravely soils that are naturally low in nutrients, such as in the Médoc region of France, the Margaret River region in Western Australia, and the Wairau River plain, Marlborough region, New Zealand, the deeper the soil the better. A similar situation pertains on the deep sandy soils on granite in the Cauquenas region, Chile. However, such depth may be a disadvantage where soils are naturally fertile and rain is plentiful, as in parts of the Mornington Peninsula, King and Yarra Valley regions, Victoria, Australia, and the Willamette Valley region in Oregon (see figure 1.11, chapter 1), because vine growth is too vigorous and not in balance.