White wine the death knell of northern viticulture. The vine disappeared from northern Germany and Baden, and the maximum altitude for viticulture descended to 220 metres. Hans-Jürgen Otto noted that: "all the vineyards suffered and decreased in area". In England the vine also disappeared. The less early vineyards preferred to select white varieties of grapes because, even if unripe, white grapes allowed wine that was a little sour to still be consumable, while red grapes do not give enough colour and green tannins make the wine bitter. The interruption of the fermentation by a cold winter led to the discovery of the
Buff (colour) colour "in the range of the Marschall color", meaning the colour in illustrations in a particular book. As a relatively inexpensive and readily-available paint colour, and one which went well alongside the near-universal black hull and white superstructure used on steamships at the time, White Star was far from the only shipping line to use a shade of buff as a funnel colour. The Orient Line and Norddeutscher Lloyd used an entirely buff funnel without the black top, while Canadian Pacific and the Swedish American Line employed a buff funnel with a representation of the company's house flag on them.