German wine is produced in many parts of Germany, with most of the production concentrated in the southwest of Germany, along river Rhine and its tributaries, with the oldest plantations going back to the Roman era. Approximately 60 per cent of the German wine production is situated in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where 6 of the 13 regions (Anbaugebiete) for quality wine are situated. Germany has about 102,000 hectares (252,000 acres or 1,020 square kilometers) of vineyard, which is around one tenth of the vineyard surface in Spain, France or Italy. The total wine production is usually around 9 million hectoliters annually, corresponding to 1.2 billion bottles, which places Germany as the ninth largest wine-producing country in the world. blank">German Wine Institute: German Wine Statistics 2007-2008

As a wine country, Germany has a mixed reputation internationally, with some consumers on the export markets associating Germany with the world's most elegant and aromatically pure white wines while other see the country mainly as the source of cheap, mass-market semi-sweet wines (notably Liebfraumilch) which a discerning wine drinker wary of his or her reputation should avoid altogether. Among the former category, Germany's reputation is primarily based on its sweet wines and for being home to the _Riesling grape variety, which at its best is used for aromatic, fruity and elegant white wines that range from very crisp and dry to well-balanced, sweet and of enormous aromatic concentration. While primarily a white wine country, red wine production has virtually exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s, primarily fuelled by domestic demand, and more than one-third of the German vineyard surface is now devoted to the cultivation of dark-skinned grape varieties, with Spätburgunder, the domestic name for Pinot Noir, in the lead.