2022 Rheingau, Pfalz and Mittelrhein: Before, During and After the Rain

BY ANNE KREBIEHL MW | DECEMBER 22, 2023

Site and timing are critical in any vintage, but in the hot and dry summer of 2022, it mattered much more than usual whether your vines were on unforgiving, well-drained, rocky sites or slightly richer soils with just a little more water-holding capacity. Timing also mattered – because if you are in a warmer region like the Pfalz or the south-facing Rheingau, your ideal harvest point coincides with the early September rains. But this is as far as a general assessment can go – as individual sites and philosophies were decisive. In 2022, the wines – mostly Riesling – do not taste of heat; they are not opulent. On the contrary, they often struggled to reach the requisite ripeness and show slender elegance. Nobly sweet wines are a rarity, with just a handful of botrytised wines being made.

The vaulted cellar at Schloss Johannisberg in the Rheingau, the only part of the building that remains from 1721.

Rheingau

For a region as compact as the Rheingau, the diversity of sites is immense: there is the rocky, exposed and hot Rüdesheimer Berg rising steeply, but there also are flatter, warmer sites of loam, loess and clay and the famous Brunnenlagen like Marcobrunn, Nussbrunnen and Wisselbrunnen, their names referring to their water availability. Then there is the relative distance to the Rhine River, which nowhere else in its course is as wide as here. Altitude also matters with the higher-lying vineyards in Hallgarten, Kiedrich and Rauenthal, benefiting from forest coolness and more water availability. It is thus not easy to sum up this region of 3,200 diverse hectares. In the Rheingau, there certainly are diverging philosophies.

Before and During the Rain

Theresa Breuer of Weingut Georg Breuer in Rüdesheim, usually amongst the first to pick, started harvesting before the rain on 1 September. “Between mid-March and mid-September 2022, we had one rain event, and that was a deluge, so not really helpful,” she said, as the water ran off rather than seeped into the hardened soil. “As of mid-July, we all sensed the suffering of the vineyards. In a way, life was easy because we did not have to spray [the dry weather meant little disease pressure] or trim shoots in the steep slopes as the vines did not really flourish.” By the time they started picking, “we felt we harvested to relieve the vine of its burden. For the first time, the harvest was not made at that point for the grapes but for the good of the vine.” Breuer noted that the Rüdesheimer Berg suffered especially. Harvest was interrupted by the rain and finished in late September, but must weights did not change notably.