German quality wine is continuing its decades-long march toward drier styles.
According to the German Wine Institute (DWI), which released its latest figures on Wednesday, July 15, 53% of all Qualitätswein and Prädikatswein produced in Germany in 2025 was marketed as dry — a one-percentage-point increase over 2024.
A Long-Running Shift
This isn't a sudden swing; it's the continuation of a trend that has been building for well over a decade. Dry wines accounted for 48% of the category in 2020 and just 40% in 2010. Over fifteen years, dry styles have gained roughly 13 percentage points of market share — a steady, structural shift rather than a short-term fashion.
The same pattern shows up in Germany's sparkling wine sector. Combined, the Brut, Extra Brut, and Brut Nature categories reached 54% of controlled sparkling wine production in 2025, up from 50% in 2020.
What's Losing Ground
The gains for dry wine are coming largely at the expense of sweeter styles, though not uniformly. Semi-dry wines held their ground, staying flat at 19% of the market, unchanged from 2024. Sweet and semi-sweet wines, however, lost one percentage point compared to the previous year — the segment most directly ceding share to the dry category's continued growth.
White Still Dominates, But Color Balance Is Shifting Too
Alongside the dry/sweet shift, the market's color composition continues to evolve. White wines held 70% of the German quality wine market in 2025. Rosé accounted for 13%, and red wines made up 17%. The DWI's figures suggest that even as red and rosé carve out modest niches, white remains firmly the backbone of German quality wine production — and increasingly, that white wine is dry.
Volume Down, Largely Due to a Short 2024 Harvest
In volume terms, around 6.2 million hectoliters of wine passed the official quality wine test (the certification process required for Qualitätswein and Prädikatswein status) in 2025 — a 7% decrease from the previous year. The DWI attributes much of this decline to the comparatively short 2024 harvest, which produced less fruit to work with heading into certification. Wines that pass this official quality test typically represent about 95% of total German wine production, making it a reliable proxy for the industry's overall output and style trends.
Why It Matters for the Trade
The continued move toward drier styles carries real implications beyond the cellar. For retailers and the hospitality sector, a growing dry-wine market shapes which styles get shelf space and wine-list placement, how inventory is managed across the year, and how buyers plan purchasing to match evolving German consumer preferences. As dry wine cements its position as the clear majority style — and as dry sparkling wine follows a similar trajectory — the German wine trade appears set to keep calibrating its offerings accordingly.
Source: Vinetur, German Wine Institute (DWI)