My rant against the burgeoning tax on wine last week was partly inspired by a recent trip to Germany where all wines are duty-free and you can drink a deliciously racy bottle of riesling for less than half what it would cost here.
Somehow you can taste the real value in a wine like that, rather than the residue in the bottle after the taxman has squeezed not only the grapes, but the pips as well.
Leaving that to one side, what of German wine? It has to be said that wine is not the first thing which springs to mind when thinking of Germany. A more likely response is steely precision, be it in building autobahns and BMWs or on the football pitch.
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