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.