For a long time we could hardly believe our luck. Harvest was just heavenly.
The golden yellow grapes were just perfect – healthy and flavourful. Immaculate weather conditions provided a rather relaxed harvest season. Four weeks long, from September 17^th to October 13^th, we were enabled to pick perfectly matured grapes. We are overjoyed by vintage 2018 which provided us with greatly satisfying qualities as well as generous quantities.
This vintage will satisfy admirers of the dry Riesling style, as well as lovers of our classic fruity and noble sweet Rieslings. In the usual manner the young wines are already offering the character of their origin, integrated in animating fruit and wonderful acidity. Our sorrows about probably to low acidities due to the heat did luckily not occur.
Regarding the vegetation period…  After a long, dim winter and a very cold March, nobody believed in an early growing season. But suddenly in April winter was seamlessly replaced by summer. The good water supply from winter together with very warm temperatures promoted a fast and rather early bud break.
A ten minutes hailstorm in May made us pretty nervous. Luckily there was almost no damage. The flowering of the vines has already started end of May and herewith we have received the first indication for a very early harvest.
Sun worshippers did not have a single reason to complain in summer 2018. But vineyard work was extremely exhausting and almost intolerable due to the daily heat.
During many nights we were scared because of nerve-stretching thunderstorms – but finally we were spared from hail. What luck!
Generally spoken it was a very dry and hot year. But in Graach we sometimes had a bit of rain and the grapes developed marvelously.
The cooler nights of late summer supported a detailed development of the flavors and prevented the acidities from dropping to much. Because of the little, but sufficient rainfall the health condition of the grapes was impeccable. But on the other hand side we also hardly found botrytis berries. Nevertheless, in a few plots, we were able to select very noble botrytis berries, as well as perfect healthy shriveled raisins. In the first line vintage 2018 provided us with Kabinett and Spätlese. The nobel sweet wines are very noble but also very rare.
Even if the grapes hang at the vines just splendid, we did not have the courage to be happy about it for a long time. But now we are truly happy. Happy about a terrific vintage in an equally delightful quantity!

Weingut Willi Schaefer, February 2019