April 28, 2017 | News | Vintages | Events
We tasted many 2016 wines at the VDP.Weinbörse Mainz earlier this week. Here some thoughts on this charmer of a 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. 2016 this year for its 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.
As we already hinted at in our Sneak Preview at the 2016 Vintage article published in Mosel Fine Wines Issue No 33, the 2016 vintage looks set to deliver lots of gorgeous wines ... despite the doubts raised after the horrific spring and early summer growing conditions (we explained this seeming contradiction “Difficult growing conditions yet gorgeous vintage” in the article).
The 2016 wines are characterized by nice and ripe aromatics, moderate richness (thanks to moderate sugar levels at picking) and ripe to juicy acidities. The wines show remarkably well at this early stage, adding to the overall charm of the vintage. The vintage seems quite an all-rounder, delivering well in all stylistic directions (dry, off-dry, fruity and sweet).
Of course, any such comment needs to be taken with the usual grain of salt when confronted with glorified generalization.
We are looking forward to diving into proper Estate visits and seeing what this charmer of a vintage has really in store for us. We anticipate to have Part I of our detailed 2016 Vintage Report ready, as usual, by the end of June or very early July.
© Text by Mosel Fine Wines "The Independent Review of Mosel Riesling ... and beyond!"
Disclaimer: Mosel Fine Wines is an independent publication and has no commercial relationship with any Estate, association or organization featured in this article.
