German Wine Growers Riding a Storm

Caption: Telling the difference between red and white grapes gets difficult as they deteriorate in rain. Photo: author

This week wine growers in central western Germany are standing with their hands-on-hips and shoulders stooped. Although none of that hardy lot is on his knees yet, many have taken a sharp kick to their bottom lines. The financial outlook is gloomy for the second year in a row for an immense German home market that normally earns over 11 billion Euro ($14.5 billion US) each year.

Official figures on the German wine harvest are not available until around 7-10th November each year, but growers in the Rhineland-Pfalz region near Mainz and Frankfurt are already looking downcast about this year’s results.
This shock comes after a whopping drop of 20% last year in areas near Rheingau, Mittelrhein and Nahe. In Pfalz the 2009 crop was down by 6%. This general picture was repeated in most of the 13 German wine regions.

Despite a reduced harvest last year, wine growers produced better than average quality wine from what was left to them by the weather. The 2009 vintage was rated as above average quality. But this year, many are still waiting to see if the sunshine forecast for the final week of September will help boost much-needed sugar content. A long and tedious winter was followed by feeble summer sunshine. Then the rains came.

The wheat harvest was stripped on time – by 10th September. But this year’s peak growing periods had already been laced with more rain than required for clay or rocky soils and in some places, strong winds preceded the current rain and damaged the crops that still stood high.

This week a wine grower in Mainz-Ebersheim, about 20 km from Mainz City, sagged visibly while describing how one of his “classic boutique” wines had to be virtually abandoned after its normal 1000 liter yield was reduced to 60 to 80. Another shrugged and guessed at a 50% loss. He had felt he should start harvesting early, before the weekend, but he didn’t obey his intuition. He was not unique. And of course, few if any insurance companies offer coverage to protect farmers if they lose either their wine crops or potatoes and tomatoes.

The gentle slopes of Rhineland-Pfalz were known to the Roman and Napoleonic forces that long ago invaded the environs and recognized their wine producing potential. Normally the region produces all the red wine it can drink and enough white is left over for a substantial and expanding wine export market that includes US (mostly Riesling-style wine), UK and Norway.

One young wine farmer I spoke to during the “festival” looked up at me, shrugged and blamed “Nature”. But sheer bad luck also played a role: The second weekend of September coincided with that four-day wine-based festival. Hoping for later sunshine days, many local wine growers (around 20 in this small town) chose to wait until last Monday or Tuesday to begin their harvesting. Clouds built up by Friday, crowning an unusually cool and damp end to summer. Rain began and on Saturday night, a deluge bucketed down. Faces fell with it. A similar fate faces growers elsewhere around Germany, a relatively compact country.

Most years the wine picking begins on the same day everywhere, as if a secret smoke signal has gone up. This time it’s different. Today, 21st September is sunny and warm; around 20 to 24 degrees Centigrade (68-72 Fahrenheit) and will be like that for at least two more days. Then it’s “Go!” time for “late-picking” of the remaining white grapes, such as Spaetburgunder and whatever is left. The town will echo with tractors, harvesters setting out for nearby slopes, wine pressing machinery and pumps. When the hubbub is over and wine taken off at last, only our local weighing machine operator near the bank will know how things really went.

Potato harvester stuck in mud beside wine field - for three weeks Photo: author

Overview of the Wine Market in Germany – Just Three Seasons Ago

“Demand for German wine in export markets continues to grow. In 2006 an amount of 290 million liters of wine, worth 561 million Euro, was exported from Germany. Compared with the year before, this represents an increase in volume of 18% and in value, 10%. The average turnover of 1.93 Euro was thus 14 cents higher than in 2005. With an export volume of 82 million litters valued at 128 million Euro, Great Britain continues to be the most important export market for German wine. German wine producers were once again particularly successful in the USA, where turnover in 2006 – almost exclusively Riesling wines – was 100 million Euro, equal to an increase of 29%. The Norwegian market also showed dynamic growth for exports of wines of German origin.”

- German Wine Institute statistics, Mainz, 2006

by Author: neil mcpherson 

Posted in: wine-beer news