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The German Wine Institute (DWI) has described the 2021 vintage in its harvest estimate as "not an easy year for German wine producers". Nevertheless, the current vintage "can be classified as good from a qualitative point of view". According to the figures, the estimated harvest volume of 8.7 million hectolitres throughout Germany is only slightly below the long-term average.
After extensive plant protection measures in the summer, the high workload in the vineyards continued until the relatively late grape harvest. In order to obtain healthy grapes and to allow the grapes to ripen as long as possible, "a lot of selection work and patience" was required. For the later ripening varieties such as Riesling, the harvest lasted until the end of October and will continue into November for some wineries.
According to the DWI, the yield situation varies greatly from region to region this year. Depending on the microclimatic conditions and the success of plant protection, the harvests within a growing region range from "extremely low" to "extraordinarily good".
Even among the growing regions, the yield differences would be relatively high. According to the Wine Institute, producers in the Middle Rhine region and in Franconia expect very good yields. They are about one third and twelve percent above the long-term average. In Baden, on the other hand, late frosts caused major yield losses, especially in the south of the region. The growing region reports a yield minus of 20 percent compared to the ten-year average. Yield losses of 15 percent are reported from Saale-Unstrut and ten percent from the Nahe.
In the other German wine-growing regions, vintners are expecting wine must harvests at about the same level as the average yield. The Württemberg winegrowers are happy about an average yield that is clearly above the extraordinarily small 2020 harvest, despite late frost and hail damage. This also applies to the producers from the Ahr, who were able to bring in an estimated harvest of 39,000 hectolitres due to the great willingness and solidarity of many volunteers.
In view of a comparatively small Europe-wide wine must harvest in 2021, which, according to the EU Commission's estimate of 171 million hectolitres, is expected to be 13 per cent smaller than in the previous year, German wine producers see themselves with their harvest result, according to the DWI, "in a relatively good starting position on the domestic and international wine market".
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Harvest estimate of the German wine-growing regions according to DWI
(uka / Source: Press release - Photo: German Wine Institute)