Vintage reports

A year of superlatives
Sun-blessed – there is no better way to describe the fantastic vintage just passed. The dreamy days of summer 2018 will live long in the memory. Our grapes enjoyed the sun as much as we did, the extra warmth resulting in exceptional levels of ripeness, flavour and minerality as well as excellent quantities.

The year started very wet with what seemed like three months of non-stop rain. In hindsight, this was a godsend – as if Mother Nature already knew what was to follow. The precipitation helped to replenish our water tables before the new growing season began.
Spring was warm and dry – ideal conditions for an early bud burst. As if on cue, the first shoots already began appearing on 20 April, which was even earlier than the previous year. More than ever, we held our collective breath and prayed for those late frosts to stay away. Luckily, our prayers were answered.

With plentiful groundwater and sunshine at their disposal, our vines shot up in no time – so much so that they had already begun to adapt to the weather by the time it came for us to prune the leaves. All our vines on the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer developed at the same pace. From a prolific fruit set came wonderfully loose clusters, thanks to perfect weather during blossoming. The mercury rose and the weather became lovelier with each day. Our summer was Mediterranean-like – more Monaco than Morscheid.

Only our youngest vines were a little less happy, as their roots have not yet reached the necessary depth to get through dry periods completely unscathed. Our older vines on the other hand – blessed with generous and, crucially, deep root systems – had no problems coping at all. On the contrary, the grapes that we picked from these venerable holdings were golden yellow, sweet and fully ripe, with unerring acidity and fruity succulence. Add to this the gratifying size of this year’s crop, and it is no wonder we are over the moon.

Our fruit was outstanding at all quality and Prädikat wine levels. We were fortunate enough to select Trockenbeerenauslesen – the pinnacle of any vintage – from a number of different sites including Kaseler Nies’chen. Oechsle levels reached up to 260 degrees.  At cool cellar temperatures, the natural ferments took a while to kick into action. However, our embryonic wines already show pure fruit expression and promising spontaneous fermentation aromas. We really have a marvellous vintage in the making.

Morscheid, 12th November 2018

A year of challenges

Looking back, there is something unique about every vintage. ‘I’ve never experienced a year like it’ is a well-worn phrase that held true in 2017 – another eventful season in which Mother Nature again showed who was boss. Faced with weather extremes such as frost, heat and drought, as well as the knowledge that rain will fall sooner or later, a vintner must keep calm and deal judiciously with the circumstances that they encounter.

The year began with a very warm spring that resulted in an early bud burst. Late frost posed a big threat – and three cold nights in April confirmed our fears, damaging shoots that were already well developed. Winegrowers and fruit farmers were badly hit throughout Europe. A spell of fine weather thereafter helped the secondary shoots to grow quickly, partially mitigating the frost-related shortfall. Conditions were near perfect during flowering, with moderate temperatures and very low rainfall in June.

The spring heatwave also had a sting in its tail, however, with our young vines in particular suffering from considerable drought stress, given that the water balance in our vineyards was already negative following a dry winter. On the other hand, our old vines benefited from the longer growing cycle thanks to their deep roots providing sufficient water nutrition. Time seemed to fly, and before we knew it our grapes had more or less ripened two weeks ahead of the long-term average – although a wet July and August had unfortunately caused some premature botrytis.

We mustered a 52-strong team of men and women to begin the preliminary harvest on 21 September – thus making the 2017 picking season the earliest in the estate’s history. Above all, we focused on meticulously selecting grapes for our Trockenbeerenauslesen and Beerenauslesen, as well as separating healthy from botrytis-affected fruit, and unripe from ripe grapes.

This hard work gave us stunning results. Piesporter Goldtröpfchen posted 192 degrees – our highest Oechsle reading on the Mosel. During what was a relatively short harvest, acidity levels fell from an initial high of 13 g/l to 9-10 g/l. Our grapes’ aromatics also changed day by day, shedding their vegetative notes and developing ripeness and concentration. The fermenting musts and fledgling wines are very fresh and fruity, with thrilling tension on the finish. Our Grosse Gewächse, sourced from plots with minimal pruning, are already showing impressive power, persistence and terroir expression.

Ultimately, 2017 was a year of extremes that threw up a wide range of challenges and conundrums in our three winegrowing valleys, the Mosel, Saar and Ruwer.
However, the results owe everything to the terroir at our disposal, Mother Nature, and the hard work of our team.

Another exciting, characterful vintage is in the making.

The 2016 vintage taxed many wine maker’s and their machine’s patience. Although the beginning of the year was rugged, the results of it were extraordinary surprising.

It started off with an atypical mild winter, with only few frosty days and nights. This raised the fear of a plague of insects, without knowing what the rest of the year would entail. After the last vintage 2015 had been sun spoiled, great expectations toward the vintage 2016 were raised. Unfortunately these expectations did not prove true at first.
Spring started off to be very wet and in average cooler than the preceding year. Extensive rainfalls impeded not only the trafficability of the vineyards, but also influenced negatively the blooming habit of the vine.

The tremendous amount of precipitation in Mai, June and July provided perfect conditions for downy mildew, which lead to a rapid dissemination.  The combination of wet grounds, the dissemination of fungal attacks and the disposability of agricultural pesticides contributed to a worst-case scenario. As if this wasn’t enough, the exclusive Kesselstatt location “Josephshof” was hit badly by a hailstorm. The outputs were reduced to less than 15 hl/ha. These wines are very rare in this vintage.

The long blooming period, the hailstorm as well as the downy mildew lead in part to tremendous losses of crop. Thus, quantitatively speaking, this vintage is the third smallest within the last 30 years, causing it to almost be written off.

However, within the last-minute the old winemaker slogan: “The wine is not yet in the cellar” got a new meaning: A dry August was followed by a glorious sunny and very warm September, which lead to the growing of golden yellow grapes. Fortunately, the deficits of the previous months were compensated.  The cool and dry October enabled a relatively late and long harvest that entailed physiological ripe and above all healthy vintage. The distress of the summer took a back seat.

Summing up one can say, that the small yield positively manifested itself in an excellent grape quality and defined concisely the expressive attributes of this year’s vintage. The technical modernization of our wine press, with its focus on pure quality through gentle manufacturing, brought us must that inspires through its multifarious fruit aroma, ripe acidity and expressive minerality. Thus, the optimal proceeding of spontaneous fermentation reflects the uniqueness of our vineyards.

Share our excitement of this extremely fascinating and extraordinary vintage.

“When there’s little, there’s even less.”

Once again, this old vintners’ saying aptly describes the size of this year’s crop. Overall, our harvest was very good – although yields varied considerably from vineyard to vineyard. Our preliminary estimates were seldom so off course.

The growing season began with little moisture in the soil, followed by a dry spring and a hot, dry summer. It wasn’t until August and September that there were any significent quantities of rainfall. Yet by then, growth was basically completed. The result: small, golden-yellow berries with extremely little juice.

Based on the experience of recent years, we began picking earlier than usual this year, too. We started on 28 September 2015. Our experienced harvest team – primarily from Romania – was able to select grapes of varying degrees of ripeness throughout the entire autumn. We picked the grapes from our top sites using three separate buckets, whereby the shriveled berries were sorted again at the vat. These efforts enabled us to achieve top levels of ripeness of up to 181 degrees Oechsle.

Thanks to very cool and primarily dry weather, we were able to harvest at a relaxed pace. For the most part, musts ranged between 85 and 95° Oe, with 9 to 10 g/l of acidity. Healthy, ripe, fruity aromas and fine, yeasty notes of spontaneous fermentation are already perceptible in our cellar.

The harvest of the grapes destined for our Grosse Gewächse was really rewarding. In the GG sites, we began reducing individual shoots very early and continued before and during blossoming. After flowering, the remaining clusters were divided and in August, foliage was removed from the vines. The result: healthy, golden-yellow berries with Oechsle readings between 92 and 100° and sensational fruit aromas. The fermenting musts are already showing enormous concentration and a wealth of fruit.

In short: you can already look forward to an outstanding vintage! The only disappointment is the small size of the harvest – yet, this contributed to the high quality of the crop.

Once upon a time ......... the start of a fairy tale ......... vintage 2014

Everyone knows the tale of Cinderella, the young woman who sat at the hearth sorting out the good from the bad lentils that her stepsisters had thrown into the ashes.

In 2014, vintners faced the same task: sorting out the good from the bad. Berry and cluster selection was decisive for good quality.
Due to warm, damp weather, vintage 2014 was replete with challenges.

Here, a brief résumé of the growing season.
Winter was warm. Apart from yield reductions due to frost and hail in the Saar Valley in early April, the weather remained very favorable. Temperatures were optimal to foster healthy grapes and early ripening.

Blossoming began on 9 June, i.e., quite early.
Foliage removal immediately thereafter proved to be just the right thing to do this year. Once again, we divided clusters in our Grosse Gewächse parcels to improve grape quality, a measure that is particularly important in these vineyard sites.


Even as late as August, growth and development remained about four weeks ahead of schedule compared with the long-term average.

The grapes were picture perfect by the end of September, and yields were also promising – a welcome relief after short crops in 2013 and 2012.

However, heavy rain in early October suddenly forced us to step up the pace. In order to pick our Riesling grapes precisely at the right moment, we had to ask a great deal of our harvest team. At times, they worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week.

This year’s harvest was marked by a very labor-intensive selection: painstakingly sorting out the good from the bad. The stringent selection led to reduced yields.

Nevertheless, the extra effort more than paid off. We were able to bring in wonderfully fruity Riesling grapes from our Grosse Lagen (very best sites) at the start of the harvest. With the onset of botrytis in the course of the harvest, must weights reached ripeness levels suitable for Spätlese and Auslese wines, sometimes exceeding 100 degrees Oechsle.

Because the quantity of completely healthy, fully ripened grapes needed for Grosse Gewächse (our very best dry wines) was limited this year, supplies of these wines will be equally tight.

In all: despite the media’s negative expectations and prognoses about vintage 2014, preliminary tastings show wines that are very ripe and fruity.

Join us in celebrating the new vintage. There’s much to look forward to.

It was quite an odd year...amid fluctuating temperatures...

Spring
Due to an extremely cold spring, bud burst didn’t take place until the end of April. Thereafter, shoot development and initial growth were normal and/or quite satisfactory. Ongoing cold, wet weather until the end of June delayed blossoming along the Mosel (3 July), Saar (7 July), and Ruwer (10 July). In addition, the development of individual berries within clusters was uneven. Last but not least, hail damage reduced yields on the Ruwer in June.

Summer
From July through August, a long period of very hot and dry weather partially offset delays in growth during spring. In late summer, we still expected a normal harvest even though berries remained small. Grapes in the best sites began to ripen at the end of August.

Autumn
Wet weather resumed in autumn. Particularly along the Saar and Ruwer, there was considerable rainfall. Yields declined rapidly in early October when the first berries began to burst. The warm, damp weather fostered the development of botrytis. By 10 October, the first clusters were already infested, whereby the greatest damage was along the Saar and Ruwer. These circumstances led to an additional, extensive reduction in yields.

Harvest
This year’s harvest began earlier than planned – on 14 October – and proved to be very complicated and time-consuming. Our core team of local workers was supplemented by our 45 loyal pickers from Romania. They were a tremendous help and enabled us to harvest clusters very selectively.
In our finest sites, harvesting in several stages is a matter of course. Pickers always have two buckets to simplify separating ripe, healthy grapes from those infested with botrytis as well as to sort grapes of varying degrees of ripeness.
Extremely low yields not only made this task “easier,” but also explains why the harvest only took two weeks. It was the shortest in the history of our estate.

Thanks to selective picking, we will be able to offer a relatively good quantity of Kabinett wines in coming months. Nevertheless, given the small volume of grapes available for Spätlese and Grosses Gewächs (only 3,000 liters), supplies will be limited.

In the Goldtröpfchen site, we were even able to harvest grapes ripe enough (153° Oechsle) to produce a Beerenauslese.