The wines of Germany: completely revised edition of Frank Schoonmaker's classic.

TASTE AND TECHNIQUE The Wines of Germany: Completely Revised Edition of Frank Schoonmaker's Classic

NOT SO LONG AGO, I attended an unforgettable tasting of rare old German wines: unforgettable both for the wines themselves and for--rarity of rarities--the absence of commercial overtones about the occasion, although the man who put it on is a wine merchant.

This was a follow-up to an earlier tasting, four or five years ago, of a similar group of irreplaceable German wines, which their owner wanted to share with a number of friends. The wines in question were Beerenauslesen, Trockenbeerenauslesen, Spatlesen, and the comparatively simple Auslesen. These terms, in German winemaking, refer to wines made from grapes at specific degrees of over-ripeness; they are hand-picked by the bunch, or even by the single grape. The wines are fabulously expensive, made to be enjoyed by themselves rather than as accompaniments to food. Owing to the northern climates in which the vines grow, in the steep Moselle and Rhine regions of Germany, the best of the wines are made in very small quantities and limited vintages--and once drunk, they are gone forever.

The man who put on the tasting is Peter M. F. Sichel, the American head of a German wine firm that recently celebrated its 125th anniversary. The family is rather like that of the banking Rothschilds; from, in this case, their ancestral Rhineland they spread over Europe and prospered in the wine business. The Sichel family is also given to the promotion of culture and to good works, alongside a well-devel-oped sense for profitable business.

The wine tastings took place in Peter's house in Mahnattan, where you sit under the works of German Impressionists and Expressionists, and eat at a table spread with an embroidered tablecloth, and meet people from all over the world. As we sipped the wines, ranging from pale gold in color to a deep, golden brown, I was transported back into a world that I wonder if still exists in Germany--the world of very cultivated, soigne house-holds where comfortable surroundings, good books, and fine pictures were part of one's daily life and taken utterly for granted. This was the world of the German haute bourgeoisie of yesteryear, the world in which the young Goethe grew up in Frankfurt, the world that Thomas Mann describes so well in the first part of his Budden-brooks saga. It is not a soft nor a sentimental world, but one based upon solid money generated by a solid work ethic regulated by a solid family feeling.

Peter M. F. Sichel--to distinguish him from the other Sichels, who run the companies in Germany, England, and France--is a tall man in his late fifties with the look of an international banker, an outgoing personality, and a rapid manner of speech. Meeting him, one recognizes immediately that he is a man who knows who he is, what he has achieved, and what he can do. What impresses one also is his gift for combining the best of a cultured gentleman's world with that of one of the most popular wines in the world, Blue Nun Liebfraumilch, a white, mildly sweet and fragrant German potion.

Blue Nun is one of the wine world's great success stories. The wine was developed in the early Fifties by the London Sichel, who recognized the importance both of a brand-name table wine and of the necessity of popularizing a German wine that could be drunk throughout the meal rather than being a sipping drink, as one would normally expect a German wine to be. I don't believe anybody thinks of Blue Nun as a wonderful wine--it is also, to many people's minds, rather over-priced --but it is a palatable, safe wine you can be sure of when everything else on the wine list somewhere in the hinterlands sounds unknown and doubtful.

German wine owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Peter M. F. Sichel. Although his firm imports and merchandises many wines from many countries, he has devoted a great deal of time and expertise to German wines. One of his several books, The Wines of Germany: Completely Revised Edition of Frank Schoonmaker's Classic (Hastings House, $10.95) is the most lucid, complete explication of a subject that, while it is truly complex, is often made unnecessarily so (as things German often are).

It seems to me that German wine reflects the German character: At its best it is absolutely wonderful, a triumph of mind over matter in its careful use of grapes from a rather unsuitable northern climate; while at its worst it is debased by the crassest, most unscrupulous commercialism to a thin, sweetish, horrid drink. For wine aficionados, German wines may be a revelation in taste and technique, but for plain quaffers I recommend California jugs every time.