[te_chris]

“Rather poor reds”. Um what? Germany and Austria produce a lot of excellent wine, red and white.

Austrian reds are some of my favourites.

In London, Georgian orange wines are very popular and that seems to be what most people who are cursorily into wine would know them for here.

[dcrazy]

Sorry, I have to heartily disagree. There may be a few examples of good Austrian and German reds out there, but your chances of getting thin, acidic swill from a random bottle is way higher than with French or Californian reds.

(See also: East Coast US wines.)

[messe]

I mean I can equally throw out the anecdotal evidence that I've found Californian wines in general intolerably sweet compared to their high ABV.

Without some more to back it up though we're both just being opinionated. The difference is that I'm admitting it.

It might also come down to to where you're based. If you're in the US, you might be getting worse German wines, in the same way that I'm probably getting worse California wines because I'm in the EU.