A secret too well kept.

RECENTLY, I hoisted myself over to the German Wine Information Bureau, which was featuring a tasting of wines of the Nahe region. The Nahe, in West Germany, is no hotbed of the exciting goings-on we have been reading about in the newspapers--on the contrary, it is rather quiet. The Nahe is between the Rhine and the Moselle river valleys. It is dedicated to agriculture--specifically, to grape-growing and wine-making.

I once lunched in a bistro-like tavern in the Nahe's chief town, a pleasant little spa called Bad Kreuznach. I ordered wine, as I automatically do with my meals, and was brought a carafe of a white Landwein (vin du pays), which tasted as if Riesling grapes had gone into its making. The wine was not as flowery and delicate as a Moselle, nor was it cloying like some hocks. It was quite a robust wine, and went well with my meal of potato soup and roast veal. I was happy and restored, and particularly pleased with the absence of fuss and bother about the wine.

At the German Wine Information Bureau, a gentleman was dispensing nine wines and explaining what they were. This obviously was an upperclass tasting: unlike the simple little Landwein I remembered, these wines came out of well-groomed brown bottles with rather complicated decorative labels. The wines were all white and, with two exceptions, were sweetish or downright sweet.

This tasting led me to think about the fact that German wines have never gone over in the United States like Italian wines. Or like French wines, still considered the most elegant. German wines can be very fine (and expensive), but Americans don't know about them, and, sadly, the German authorities do not seem interested in informing them.

Part of the problem is the complexity of German wine labels. The label will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the wine, except whether you will like it or not.

Basically, there are two categories of German wine: those made of normally ripened grapes, and those made of specially selected overripe grapes. But there are many subcategories within these two. Among wines made from normally ripened grapes, there are first Tafelwein (vin de table) and Landwein (vin du pays). Then, moving up the scale, there is Qualitaetswein (QBA), made in one of the 11 specified regions (I'll come to them later). Then comes the Qualitaetswein mit Praedikat (QMB), a wine that is made in a specific region and that also has certain characteristics. Next is Kabinettwein, a good bet with most foods. Then we come to the wines made from riper grapes. First in this category is Spaetlese, made from late-harvested grapes; it can be trocken (dry) or halbtrocken (semi-dry). Next comes Auslese, made from very ripe grapes, selected bunch by bunch to make a rich, noble wine; followed by Beerenauslese, made from very ripe, individually selected grapes. Eiswein comes next, made from overripe grapes that froze on the vine, a wine that is quite rare, and is both very sweet and acid at the same time. Finally there is Trockenbeerenauslese Eiswein, made from individually picked frozen grapes.

A German wine label will tell you exactly which of these categories the contents of its bottle fit into. It will also tell you the geographic origin of the wine, which is important since there are big differences among the 11 wine regions. These regions are subdivided into 35 districts (Bereiche), which are divided again into collective vineyard sites called Grosselagen, and finally there are the Einzellagen, the individual vineyard sites. On each German label, you will also find the vintage year, the testing number (telling you that the wine is what it claims to be), the name of the producer, and the kind of grapes used. As if this were not enough, most producers add a mass of decoration to the label.

To get this and more information on the subject of German wines I contacted Mr. Lamar Ellwood, an affable and presentable man in, I would guess, his forties. To my surprise, I learned that the German Wine Information Bureau is not a government agency, but a private public-relations outfit. However, Mr. Ellwood and his helpful female assistants do what they can for German wines, such as issuing press releases about harvests and notices of tastings by respectable producers.

But they do not get much help from the German wine-making establishment or the German government. I find it sad that the Germans do not take a greater interest in their wines. It's as if they are only too pleased that, in their iffy climate, they can make wine at all. Americans in general will buy anything that is fully promoted, but German wines are not.

If the Germans ever did decide to court the American market, a necessary first step would be to simplify the labels for export. To be sure, some of the complication is inherent. The glory of German wine is the whole gamut of special wines made from overripe grapes; these must be accurately labeled, and they will not all be on the market at any given time. The winemakers often cannot make Eiswein; being honest Germans, they won't call something Eiswein if it is not. On the other hand, one simplifying factor is that it is the producer's name that counts. Speaking for myself, I would be more willing to try a new category of wine if the bottle in question were made by someone whose other wines I had liked. For instance, I like the sweet Moselles made by Egon Mueller, and so I would be more apt to try one of his dry wines.

A few years ago, when I took a look at German wines, the Lage was important. In other words, if the grapes came from a famous site or a vineyard of renown, the label would indicate this fact. But then there was a scandal, and the German government decreed a Flurbereinigung (cleaning up of the ground). I have been told that little came of this enterprise, however. The German government had forgotten that not all dealings with wine will be strictly kosher.