There are dates in the wine connoisseur community's calendar that cannot be changed - the visit of (this year:) ten VDP wineries with a presentation of their current wines at the end of March is one of them. It's always the same wineries, from A for Adeneuer from the Ahr to W for Wirsching from Franconia. But what the top winegrowers from nine growing regions bring with them is of course always new: wine is, after all, a renewable raw material and one that presents the makers with new challenges every year: too dry, too wet, too cold, too warm - anything goes, it's rarely really right - but winegrowers are, after all, only winegrowers and are therefore at the mercy of nature. And as if that wasn't enough, there are also the sensitivities: there are wars that nobody needs and for some time now there have been massive campaigns against wine because it also contains alcohol. And the campaigners only talk about wine, never about beer or even schnapps.
Winemakers have to live with all this and deal with it somehow. They do it (at least the ones who were there this Saturday) with great joy, a lot of conviction and - to put it bluntly - with great wines. And these are by no means only (although of course also...) the Grosse Gewächse, i.e. the top wines of the respective wineries. "But if you only try those, you're missing out!", I heard more than once: the estate wines are the wineries' calling card - which on the one hand are of course less long-lived and powerful, but on the other hand are fun to drink even at a young age - and at a fraction of the price.
