2020

Outstanding Quality ...

thanks to precipitation in winter,

the late summer and early autumn

While the 2020 growing season wasn’t as obviously hot as some recent years, it nevertheless

goes into the record books as the warmest overall period since records have been kept.

The long-term savior for the vines was the plentiful rains during the winter of 2019/20. January

started much too mild, with only a very few true frost days. But February soon brought a number

of heavily rainy days, which are so crucial for building up water reserves. By mid-March the

pendulum swung back to bone dry, with very warm and sunny conditions at times.

Unseasonably warm temperatures and plentiful rain encouraged very early bud break around

10 April... the second-earliest date on record, and a full two weeks earlier than the long-standing

historical average.

In response, flowering shifted far forward to late May, but was slowed by a cold snap starting

on Whit Sunday — and as a result didn’t finish until 10 June, albeit still two weeks ahead of

historical expectations.

June and July ran roughly in accordance with the historical averages, leading to an August and

September of enduring high temperatures and plentiful sunshine.

The ability of our vines to develop at all throughout the extremely dry summer can be directly

attributed to the water reserves banked during the rainy winter months.

Ripening began around 10 August, also 14 days ahead of the long-standing historical average.

The high quality of the fruit, which showed perfect health and physiological ripeness, came thanks

to the very warm, sunny and dry September weather ... including the cool nights necessary for

optimal aroma formation. We couldn’t have asked for more!

The main harvest started very early as well, on 21 September. Given the outstanding quality of

the grapes, things moved along quickly, allowing the harvest to conclude as the first half of

October came to an end.

The second part of October was spent harvesting the Spätlese and nobly sweet prädikat wines,

a process that actually extended into November.

The grapes were so healthy that noble rot only arrived very late, pushing back our chance to harvest

the raisin-like berries for our Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese wines.

As such, there will be only a very small quantity of these coveted nobly sweet treasures, albeit

in fantastic quality, high concentration up around 200° Oe, with a very fine, elegant acidity.

We’re proud to have achieved a Trockenbeerenauslese once again this year — the 32nd in a row.

Harvest volumes finished right around the historical average.