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At the beginning of the main grape harvest, which this year began extraordinarily early in most growing regions, German wine producers are looking forward to a vintage with overall very good qualities and promising harvest volumes.
As the German Wine Institute (DWI) reports, however, the ripening and yield prospects in the vineyards are very much dependent on the water supply, which is currently developing extremely heterogeneously in the individual regions and even within individual sites.
Thus, older vines with well developed roots and vineyards on deep soils have so far survived the dry-hot weather surprisingly well. Younger vine stocks or vineyard sites with poor water availability were partially irrigated in order to avoid ripening delays or even crop failures caused by drought stress. In addition, the rainfall of the past days and weeks was distributed very differently from region to region.
Thanks to the sunny weather, the grapes in the majority of the vineyards were healthy with very good must weights overall, and the red wine varieties were very well coloured. At present, the development in many cases points to an almost uniform ripening time of many grape varieties in the coming weeks, which suggests that a rapid grape harvest can be expected.
(uka / Photo: German Wine Institute)