Germany’s most grown grapes

In our last Brief we wrote about the most popular grape varieties grown in Germany. The figures came from a print magazine but after looking at them a little more closely we thought they looked a bit peculiar (as did some of our readers!). So we checked instead the statistics from Deutsche Weininstitut:

These figures are from 2008 and in % of total area.

-- White grape varieties
Riesling: 21.9%
Müller-Thurgau 13.4%
Silvaner 5.1%
Ruländer 4.4%
Weissburgunder 3.6%
Kerner 3.6%
Bacchus 2.0%
Scheurebe 1.6%
Chardonnay 1.1%
Gutedel 1.1%

Total area for white grapes: 63.6%

-- Red grape varieties
Spätburgunder 11.5%
Dornfelder 7.9%
Portugiese 4.3%
Trollinger 2.4%
Schwarzriesling 2.3%
Regent 2.1%
Lemberger 1.7%
Acolon 0.5%
Merlot 0.4%

Total area for red grapes: 36.4%