April 30, 2018 | News | Vintages | Events

2016 Vintage | VDP | Mainzer Weinbörse

Vintage 2017 | A Sneak Preview

We tasted many 2017 wines at the VDP.Weinbörse Mainz earlier this week. Here some thoughts on this very promising vintage.

VDP.Weinbörse | 2017 Vintage

The VDP.Weinbörse is organized by the VDP.Die Prädikatsweingüter, the grower association which regroups some 200 of the best wine Estates in Germany. This fair for professionals is held every year, at the end of April. It allows member Estates to showcase their first wines from the latest vintage, i.e. this year the 2017 vintage (for white wines).

Overall, ProWein in March always proves too early for any meaningful input on the latest vintage. Many wines are still in cask, others - recently bottled - are still bottle sick, etc. However, the April timing of the VDP.Weinbörse allows for a good general feel for the latest vintage, even if it is often still too early for a proper review of any individual wine.

2017 Vintage | Small but Beautiful

As we already hinted at in our Sneak Preview at the 2017 Vintage article published in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 39 (Jan 2018), 2017 is a classic vintage in the making, albeit a highly sprung one.

The 2017 show unusual concentration (a result of super-low yields). The wines are underpinned by good acidity and prove rather backward, but with great inner balance. These characteristics run through all styles of wines, from dry to sweet. Those wines where playfulness and charm will eventually emerge could become modern-day legends. As it stands, the vintage has huge potential, even if it is not a foregone affair.

Of course, any such comment needs to be taken with the usual grain of salt when confronted with glorified generalization.

Vintage 2017 | Part I of the Detailed Vintage Report by June

We are looking forward to diving into proper Estate visits and seeing what the hugely promising 2017 vintage has really in store for us. As usual, we anticipate Part I of our detailed 2017 Vintage Report to be ready by the end of June.

In the meantime, we encourage you to plunge into our detailed reports on the 2016 vintage: 2016 still remains seriously underrated and many top wines are still available on the market.


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