The German wine expert Marcus "Sam" Hofschuster (*1968) is today one of the most renowned wine critics in Germany and Europe. His passion for German wine was awakened in the late 1980s. During his time as a wine merchant, he was already a committed promoter of top German growths. It was then that he came up with the idea of a comprehensive guide to the best German growths (at that time still online and in book form, now only online). Gradually, other countries followed.
Today, Marcus Hofschuster and his colleagues taste and rate wines on a daily basis. From the beginning, this was done exclusively in the form of blind tastings in the tasting room of wein.plus in Erlangen (Middle Franconia, Bavaria).
As a matter of principle, no results of tastings at producers' or at events are published, as long as they are not samples of rarities. All wines provided by producers are graded according to a strictly designed 100-point system(wine rating) and described in detail in the form of tasting notes (wine talk). Re-tastings are also carried out regularly in order to check the ratings or to determine the development. The results have been made available online on the website of wein.plus immediately after the tasting since 1999.
This makes the wine guide one of the most up-to-date in the world. On 3 December 2021, the 150,000th wine review was published by it. The number of wines tasted by him, however, is considerably higher: Altogether, he has already given almost 200,000 reviews for wein.plus since its launch in 2000, but reviews with less than 80 points were not published in the first years. Hofschuster has only awarded the dream mark of 100 points to twelve wines in the 21 years so far. All ratings are still in the archive of wein.plus. See also under winegrowing personalities.
