The growing season has brought interesting developments so far. At first, a mild winter and warm spring with sufficient rainfall lead to good water storage in the soil and the vines, which brought perfect starting conditions for the following spring. There were some unusually warm days in the middle of April, which already felt like summertime. Due to these warm conditions, the buds were bursting quite early.
However, after these quite lovely spring days, tragedy struck on April 22nd and due to spring frosts, the majority of our vines were damaged by the cold. While our vines in the Oberweseler OELSBERG were not damaged due to the close proximity to the river, the young and fragile buds in our major vineyard sites Engehöller GOLDEMUND and BERNSTEIN including the VDP.GROSSE LAGE AM LAUERBAUM were frozen. We are expecting a significantly lower crop yield this year – not only the vines were in shock.
The further development of the vines was now shock-frozen. Our Riesling vines have burst again approximately 4 weeks later, but these buds are now less fertile. Our pinot varietes are not as resistant and we are not harvesting any white pinots this year.
Due to the warm and humid weather in late spring and early summer, we had no time to rest in order to keep the vines and the soil in good and healthy conditions. The inflorescences are showing up approximately 4 weeks later in the damaged vines compared to the undamaged ones. The flowering proceeded at a quite normal time in the middle of june.
The wet and mild weather was good for the growth of the shoots and leaves and also the natural soil cover crops in the vineyard, so the vineyards are full of energy and the vines can get all necessary ingredients for successful photosynthesis and grape development.
The grapes were increasing in size until the middle of juli and have a nice structure. The dry and sunny, warm weather of the last weeks is giving us hope for excellent aroma and sugar development in the grapes. More and more berries are turning golden and at the moment, we expect the end of september as start for harvest time.
All in all, we hope for a vintage, which brings good quality into the glass by the kind of natural crop minimization. In the meantime, you can enjoy the harmonic 2023 vintage in our estate or online.
Cheers,
Anja & Jörg Lanius
