Vintage Report 2005 ...

A warm, but by far not as hot summer as 2003, continued into a beautiful sunny autumn. This allowed a perfect ripening of the grapes in 2005 vintage. Especially the always late ripening Riesling grapes achieved exceptional quality with must-weights similar to 2003 but with higher acidity levels and mineral concentration similar to 2004.

The harvest started around the middle of October and lasted until the second week of November. The grapes were very healthy with some amounts of noble rot in the best vineyards such as the Weisenberg. Here we were able to select the botrytised fruit and the accurate selection of these grapes allowed us to sort out grapes for Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese.

The must went into fermentation right away but under temperature control took its time to finish fermentation as late as March 2006. Some contact on the fine lees is helping the wines to be bery polished and rich in aroma. The wines show very ripe fruit and mineral finesse with a very well balanced finish.

We view the 2005 vintage as the best vintage in our estate in years even though it is following several great vintages such as 2001, 2002 and 2003. We are very excited about this great vintage.