April 28, 2015: News, Events, Vintages

VDP.Weinbörse Mainz - A Sneak Preview of the 2014 Vintage

The VDP Estates presented their first 2014 wines at the VDP.Weinbörse Mainz earlier this week. Here some first thoughts on the vintage.

The VDP.Weinbörse is organised by the VDP.Die Prädikatsweingüter, the grower association which regroups some 200 of the best winemaking Estates in Germany. The fair is held each year at the end of April and allows its member Estates to showcase their first wines from the latest vintage, i.e. 2014 this year.

ProWein in March is often too early: many wines are in cask, others are bottle sick, etc. However the VDP.Weinbörse allows for a good sneak preview on the vintage.

Here our first thoughts on the 2014 vintage:

• A great potential for real Kabinett and Spätlese: Kabinett have often as little as 80° Oechsle, a healthy return to levels like in the “good old days”!
• A vintage for acidity lovers: Overall, acidity levels are brisk to high (which may not be to everybody’s taste especially in dry wines).

• Quite heterogeneous: There is a bit of botrytis at play in many wines and, as soon as this happens, quality seems to get very varied, even within collections

Of course, this is to be enjoyed with the usual grain of salt when confronted with glorified generalization.

However, the fair did one thing: it triggered our appetite for 2014. We are looking forward to diving into proper Estate visits and see what the 2014 vintage has really in store for us!

In the meantime, why not refresh your memory of the 2014 growing conditions as they unfolded (follow the links!) or revisit the 2013 vintage?