Stargarder Land is a small region for country wine in northeastern Germany, which was defined in an amendment to the German

wine law Wine laws are legislation regulating various aspects of production and sales of wine. The purpose of wine laws includes combating wine fraud, by means of regulated protected designations of origin, labelling practices and classification of wine, ...

on 4 March 2004. Located in

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MV; ; ), also known by its Anglicisation, anglicized name Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, is a Federated state, state in the north-east of Germany. Of the country's States of Germany, sixteen states, Mecklenburg-Vorpom ...

, approximately 100 km north of Berlin, it is by far the northernmost official wine-growing area of Germany. The designation Mecklenburger Landwein is used for country wines from this region.Wein-Plus Glossar: Stargarder Land
accessed 22 January 2013 In two respects, Stargarder Land is different from all other wine regions in Germany. First, the 13 well-established

German wine German wine is primarily produced in the west of Germany, along the river Rhine and its tributaries, with the oldest plantations going back to the Celts and Ancient Rome, Roman eras. Approximately 60 percent of German wine is produced in the st ...

regions (usually referred to as ''Anbaugebiete'') are all allowed to produce wine of all quality levels of the

German wine classification The German wine classification system puts a strong emphasis on standardization and factual completeness, and was first implemented by the German Wine Law of 1971. Nearly all of Germany's vineyards are delineated and registered as one of approxi ...

, while Stargarder Land is only allowed to produce wines belonging to the lower part – ''Tafelwein'' (table wine) and ''Landwein'' ( country wine) – and not the higher "quality wine" categories ''Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete'' (QbA) and '' Prädikatswein''. Since the name of the wine region is always displayed prominently on the

labels A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product. Labels are most often affixed to packaging and containers using an adhesive, or sewing when affixed to ...

of German quality wines, but not the lesser categories, this is a significant difference. Second, Stargarder Land is only in size, which would be small even for a single vineyard site in other regions. The smallest of the 13 regions for quality wine is

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

, which in 2006 had of vineyards, and the largest was

Rheinhessen Rhenish Hesse or Rhine HesseDickinson, Robert E (1964). ''Germany: A regional and economic geography'' (2nd ed.). London: Methuen, p. 542. . (, ) is a region and a former government district () in the States of Germany, German state of Rhineland ...

with .German Wine Institute: German Wine Statistics 2007–2008
Thus, Stargarder Land is something of a newly created oddity in the German wine regulations, and the region is generally not considered as Germany's 14th ''Anbaugebiet'', but rather as a smaller district which leads its own existence outside the regions. The region's wine is produced by two small winemaking cooperatives, one in Rattey (Schloss Rattey) operating and one in Burg Stargard on . The amount of wine produced is so small that it is not sold commercially, but rather handed out as dividend to the members of the cooperatives.

Grape varieties

Seven

grape varieties This list of grape varieties includes cultivated grapes, whether used for wine, or eating as a table grape, fresh or dried (raisin, currant, sultana). For a complete list of all grape species, including those unimportant to agriculture, see ''V ...

are allowed in the region:

Blauer Portugieser Blauer Portugieser is a red Austrian, Slovenian wine, Croatian wine, Moravian and German wine grapeJ. Robinson (ed) ''"The Oxford Companion to Wine"'' Third Edition pg 542 Oxford University Press 2006 found primarily in the Rheinhessen, Pf ...

, Blauer Spätburgunder,

Huxelrebe Huxelrebe is a white grape used for wine. Huxelrebe is primarily found in Germany, where the cultivated area covered in 2019, with a decreasing trend. It is primarily found in the German wine regions Rheinhessen, Palatinate and Nahe. Small plan ...

Müller-Thurgau Müller-Thurgau () is a white grape variety (sp. ''Vitis vinifera'') which was created by Hermann Müller from the Swiss Canton of Thurgau in 1882 at the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute in Germany. It is a crossing of Riesling with Made ...

, Phoenix, Ortega and

Regent In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been dete ...

. Approximately two-thirds of the production consists of red wine varieties. The 2008 statistics recorded rounded-off figures of each for Ortega, Phoenix and Regent, and less than 1 ha for the other four allowed varieties.

History

The region is said to have 800 years of wine growing history, although presumably on a smaller scale most of this time, since professional

viticulture Viticulture (, "vine-growing"), viniculture (, "wine-growing"), or winegrowing is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine ...

in the region apparently dates from 1853. Documentation of a viticultural tradition was necessary in order to be defined as a wine region in 2004. The modern history of the region takes its beginning in 1999, when an association of "private winemakers" in Rattey was formed. In 2001, the Agricultural ministry of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was petitioned to grant Stargarder Land official status. Because of the "

wine lake Wine lake is a cultural phrase referring to the phenomenon of perceived overproduction of wine in the European Union. The phenomenon first came in perception & persistence around the mid-1980s and reemerged in the mid-2000s as a significant iss ...

", the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

operates a system of planting rights to vineyards, where new vineyards are only allowed if planting rights are transferred from another vineyard where the vines are ripped up. The EU applies this system to each member state, and in the German implementation of this system, the planting rights have been divided out by the federal German government to the German wine-growing states. This meant that Mecklenburg-Vorpommern didn't have any planting rights, and only could acquire such rights if they were transferred from another state. As a solution,

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

, where over 60% of the German vineyard surface (or over 60,000 ha) is situated, gave up 3.7 hectare of its planting rights. Thus, under present wine regulations, Stargarder Land is prohibited from growing in size.

References

{{coord, 53, 34, 23, N, 13, 36, 55, E, region:DE-MV_type:landmark_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title Wine regions of Germany Geography of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Mecklenburgische Seenplatte (district)