"The most important vintage of our generation"

This is what it looked like in Dernau at the end of July

High above the river, all is seemingly right with the world: the vineyards are green, the Pinot Noir on the vine is ripe. If it weren't for the deep furrows in the river down in the valley: The stream bed - a moonscape. A dented fuel oil tank lies on a slope. An entire lane of the main road on the other side is missing, torn away that night when the flood came. "The wave was eight metres high," says Philipp Nelles from the VDP winery of the same name, and adds: "When you look down there now, you think: was there something?"