2015 Mosel harvest on a knife-edge

The 2015 harvest in the Mosel has the potential to be great, but inclement weather is raising slight concerns that it will fall short of expectations.

As has been the case across most of Europe, summer this year in Germany has been hot and dry but early autumn has brought heavy and persistent rain showers and continued warm weather, leaving producers fearing the onset of rot.

The harvest is still some weeks off and producers are, for the time being, still happy despite the rain.

Katharina Prüm told the drinks business it was “not a catastrophe so far. It all looks good. If it rains for the next three weeks it’s a problem.”

Likewise, Christian Ebert of Schloss Saarstein who added that it “wasn’t a problem” and there was “no disaster”. All of the winemakers who spoke to db said that the rains had arrived at the “wrong moment” and no more was needed. Cooler nights were also on the wish list of many though they may have been slightly mollified that the rain showers were often interspersed with high winds.

The spectre of last year’s vintage hangs heavy over the 2015s. Just like this year 2014 was on-track to be a stellar year and then heavy rains and humidity caused widespread botrytis and forced a rushed harvest.

Florian Lauer of Weingut Peter Lauer, among others drew this parallel while Markus Molitor said it had been one of the most expensive vintages he’d ever produced because of the amount of sorting required. Bernard Werner of Weingut Werner in Leiwen, told db he’d cut out 30% of his fruit last year.

That said, the producers all pronounced themselves very happy with their 2014s, despite the work required to make them.

Philipp Zilliken from Forstmeister Geltz-Zilliken said the team had been both “surprised” and “very happy” when the 2014 harvest started and that the wines had “good concentration”.

Prüm agreed saying: “It was challenging but we’re very happy with the results. It’s a classic, racy vintage with good acidity.”

She added it wasn’t a “high Prädikat” year but better for kabinett and spätlese wines and, as such, was a “good complement” to the 2013s which was very good for auslese and above.