Tomas Clancy: Up from the ashes

After World War II, German wine had something of an image problem - the story of its climb back to respectability is fascinating

Mosel Valley: the source of German fine wineGetty

During the 1890s, Irish wine retailer Alex Findlater was selling 16 different German Rieslings with prices akin to classed growth Bordeaux. In Findlater’s 1902 catalogue, Johannesburg wine sold for three times the price of Château Langoa Barton.

Dublin at the turn of the 20th century was in thrall to the great wines of Germany – and this fame was not unique to our isle. Up until World War I, the fine wine world ...