The beautiful late summer of 2016 led to a happy end after a turbulent year!

The still very young Riesling wines fascinate already with their bright fruit, elegancy, juiciness and nicely integrated acidity. Peach, citrus -fruit, red current and cassis are some of the many flavors revealed by these “youngsters”. – Each Riesling has its own individual personality. As in every year, you can follow the typical characteristics of Graacher Himmelreich, Graacher Domprobst and Wehlener Sonnenuhr, like a common thread through the entire 2016 range.

Above all, we were able to produce Kabinett and Spätlese wines, as well as a little of village -level and Auslese wines. We are extremely happy about the high quality of every single wine!
It was a rocky road to obtain these results – very busy, exciting and demanding. On 27 May 2016 a hailstorm swept across parts of our vineyard holdings. In the affected vineyards, we found about 80 percent of the shoot tips were damaged and our mood was dampened. Luckily, the clusters were not hit that much and, the loss of yield was finally less than previously feared.

The rather mild winter and spring were followed by a warm and humid early summer. From mid-May until the beginning of July, it rained almost every day. We had perfect conditions for vine growth. However, this meant exemplary conditions for fungal diseases as well. But due to the perfect timing of our vineyard work and many additional working hours, we got the difficult situation under control.

July came along with a long-desired weather change and spoiled us with a late but perfect summer. September 2016 will probably go down in history as the hottest September since the beginning of weather records in 1880. The Riesling grapes developed marvelously.

On 11 October 2016, we started our harvest. We were so lucky because of the golden -yellow, aromatic and healthy grapes with rather low levels of botrytis. Because of the warm late summer, the acidity levels were a bit more moderate than in the previous year. The harvest weather was mostly dry. It only rained one day towards the end of the picking season on 23 October 2016. Two days later, the grapes were dry again, and we continued harvesting fantastic grapes until we happily finished on 29 October 2016.

Weingut Willi Schaefer, February 2017