Meet the winemakers

Tastings are popular with wine enthusiasts all over the world and in Germany the annual season starts as soon as the new vintage has been bottled. Between spring and autumn, many wine estates invite visitors to wine festivals when the previous year's wine can be tasted with no obligation to buy.

Regional wine associations and other bodies organise wine fairs where wine makers from one or more regions offer their wines for sampling.

Events such as "Wine at the Palace" in Koblenz, where wines from all over Rhineland-Platinate can be tasted and "Baden-Württemberg Classics", a wine fair featuring wine producers from both the Baden and Württemberg regions held in German cities, are remarkable for the variety of wines on offer as well as the amazing settings in which so many wines can be tasted. Wine fans not only experience wine as a cultural phenomenon, they also encounter the wine regions' architectural treasures, such as the remains of the Roman baths in Trier, Rheinfels Castle whose vaulted cellar is the biggest north of the Alps and Eberbach Abbey, founded by Cistercian monks. Many individual wineries or wine cooperatives also get together to stage wine tastings.

There is a long history of wine auctions along the Moselle, Nahe and Rhine rivers. They offer a unique opportunity to sample rare fine wines and to bid for them at auction. More and more vintners' associations hold wine tastings or organise vineyard walks with picnics, enabling visitors to taste wines in the locations where the grapes for the next vintage are ripening. They include vineyards such as the "roter Hang" near Nierstein on the Rhine, Bopparder Hamm on the Middle Rhine and the Kastanienbusch estate on the Southern Wine Route.

Other, fascinating wine-related events take place in the colder months of the year, such as wine cellar open nights now run by villages in a number of wine-making regions. With tasting glass in hand, visitors walk from cellar to cellar, discovering new wines on the way and getting to know the wine makers. Experiences like this forge lifelong links with wine regions, wine-making families and their wines.