German wine the best vineyards in Germany are steep vineyards overlooking rivers, where mechanisation is impossible and a lot of manual labour is needed to produce the wine. Since it can be difficult to get ripe grapes in such a northernly location as Germany, the sugar maturity of grapes (must weight) as measured by the Oechsle scale have played a great role in Germany. German vintners on average crop their vineyards quite high, with yields averaging around 64-99 hl/ha, a high figure in international comparison. "New" crossings used for low-quality white wine commonly yield 150-200 hl/ha, while quality-conscious producers who strive to
Wine Grapes to a connection between the Italian variety Primitivo and the Croatian wine grape Crljenak Kaštelanski. After years of research and DNA testing of vines from vineyards across the globe, a single 90-year-old grape vine from the garden of an elderly lady in Split, Croatia provided the evidence to show that Zinfandel was originally a Croatian grape known as "Tribidrag" that had been cultivated in Croatia since the 15th century. Other findings reported in "Wine Grapes" include the discovery of several species of Malvasia grapes growing in central and southern Italy are actually the Spanish wine grape Tempranillo and that Cabernet