According to estimates, the 2023 wine year appears to be an above-average one for eastern German vintners. As the German Wine Institute (DWI), based in Bodenheim, Rheinhessen, announced on Wednesday, wine producers in Saxony can look forward to an exceptional vintage with a volume increase of 23 percent compared to the long-term average (2013 to 2022). The harvest estimate is around 28,500 hectoliters of wine must, which is also 10 percent more than last year. In the Saale-Unstrut region, 50,000 hectoliters are expected - 13 percent more than the ten-year average yield and 6 percent less than in 2022.
According to the DWI, a yield of around 8.8 million hectoliters of wine must is expected nationwide, which is 1 percent below the average yield of the past ten years and 3 percent below last year's harvest of 9.1 million hectoliters. Ultimately, the grape harvest turned out to be lower than still expected by the Federal Statistical Office at the beginning of September. That had spoken for 2023 of a probably clearly better wine harvest than in the previous year and of an expectation of nearly 9.9 million hectoliters of wine must.
According to DWI the harvest quantities remained at the end clearly behind first estimates, because many wine-growing enterprises would have accepted smaller yields due to a so-called selective pre-harvest. At the beginning, there had been a good bloom of vines, said DWI spokesman Ernst Büscher. Later, the many grapes had become saturated due to the abundant rainfall in the summer, so they had become thicker. Some of them burst open. Winemakers would then have removed such burst open grapes, for example to prevent rot.
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