Who It's For: Intermediate to advanced students, WSET and CMS candidates working on German wine, and Riesling die hards.
The German Prädikat system is one of the most misunderstood classifications in wine. It ranks wines by the ripeness of the grapes at harvest, not by quality or sweetness, and once you understand how it actually works, German Riesling becomes dramatically easier to shop and drink.
This class walks through the ladder using wines from the Mosel, where Riesling reaches some of its most transparent and expressive forms. We pour Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, and Trockenbeerenauslese side by side, and where possible from a single producer, so the shift from one level to the next is unmistakable. Along the way we cover how ripeness affects sugar, acid, and texture, why the same vineyard can produce five very different wines in the same vintage, and why the Mosel remains the reference point for the category.