After four very intensive weeks, we completed our 2024 grape harvest on September 27. It is a particularly emotional moment for us every year when all the grapes are harvested and protected from the weather in the cellar. A look back once again clearly shows that it hasn’t been this wet in the Palatinate for a long time. It rained from the end of the 2023 harvest until the following spring. In many months, significantly more than we are used to. Precipitation in winter in particular always makes us very happy, as the soils can store the water well and thus have a good supply the following year. This means that 2024 was a vegetation pattern that we are already familiar with from a year like 2016. Wet years are challenging for us and our team in the vineyards. On the one hand, the superficial, mild agents we use to protect against fungal diseases are quickly washed away by the rain. Secondly, there were only short windows of time, unfortunately often at night or on a public holiday, when the work was possible. At the same time, in such years with moderate temperatures, the acidity is not broken down as much and the sugar content remains moderate. The harvest was characterized by extremely changeable weather: from midsummer days, when the harvest was carried out in shorts, to temperatures below 10 degrees and drizzle. This made it all the more important to always have an overview of the condition of the grapes in order to make the best possible harvest decisions and to harvest all the grapes at the optimum time. During the last days of the harvest in particular, our team of around 40 harvest helpers had to step on the gas once again to bring the grapes into the cellar in good time before the rain returned and thus protect them from the onset of rot. Once again, it was a harvest that made it clear how necessary selective hand-picking by our experienced helpers is in order to process only healthy grapes and meet our quality standards. Looking back, we are once again very satisfied with the harvest and are looking forward to the first samples of the new vintage, which will have a somewhat cooler character with reduced quantities.
The idea of redesigning our assortment has occupied us for a long time. Intensively we thought about how to take this step and whether we were too bold, too progressive or too fast. But the desire to focus the winery on the best was too strong. Therefore, the conversion took place in 2022. All vineyards that are not VDP. First and Great Layers have been delivered. In addition to our single-vineyard wines, there is now only one wine per variety, “Aus den Lagen”. These wines, which come 100% from our classified vineyards, are hand-picked, spontaneously fermented and carefully blended. This allows us to devote all our attention to our best vineyards and to implement our focus on wines of origin even more consistently.
After two years, we know that the decision was absolutely right for us. Now there is not a single wine in our range that is not backed by large vineyards, careful work and a lot of thoughts. We would like to thank you for the great encouragement and your willingness to follow this consistent path with us. The next step included to release all Rieslings in fall, too. Thus, in our cellar we no longer make a distinction between “Aus den Lagen”, Erster Lage and Großer Lage. All wines are separated from the yeast at the same time, blended and finally bottled. This gives the wines even more time and us the chance to really get to know the wines in detail before they are bottled in July and finally enter your cellars in September.
