Last night Anne Krebiehl MW won the prestigious International Wine Book of the Year award for The Wines of Germany at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards, her definitive and much-needed book on German wine. Here we re-run an interview she did with The Buyer when the book was launched. To buy a copy there is a hot link at the end of the feature.

For the past two decades German wine has been on a roll with the country housing one of Europe’s most vibrant, creative and progressive wine industries. And yet the wines of Germany are some of the most misunderstood on the planet. In an in-depth and wide-ranging interview German wine expert Anne Krebiehl MW explains about the full trajectory of the German wine industry – early success, then doldrums, its current state of health and its direction – and why now is the right time for re-evaluation. She explains why there is currently an unprecedented density of quality production and a new generation of winemakers who are re-defining what German wine can be in the 21st century. Grape varieties have changed as have wine styles – with grace and elegance favoured over power – all the result of a new-found, more self-confident identity that was almost obliterated by two world wars and the disastrous legal framework of the 1970s.