Germany produces good wines. And not without merit: there are in fact very good reasons why it should be otherwise. First of all, its vineyards are the most northerly in the world, since they straddle the 50th parallel and thus lie at approximately the same latitude as Newfoundland or the Kamchatka peninsula.

Moreover, the vines are constantly threatened by frost, not to mention the fact that they generally grow on steep slopes, which are very difficult to access. Moreover, the German is far from being a wine drinker: if he swallows fantastic quantities of excellent beer, he only drinks an average of eight to ten litres of' wine per year, which is supposedly the weekly ration of a French or Italian worker.