Vintage Year

 

Heinrich Vimmer gave a wave then closed the door on the old boys still nursing their glasses at the upturned wine barrel, pressed into service as a table.

His retirement party had been subdued. All sixteen of the vineyard’s employees had crowded into the tasting room for the awkward drinks affair, which Heinrich had hoped his old boss of 43 years, Herr Schmitt, would attend.

Instead, he’d had to make do with a curt speech from the new boss, Moritz, Herr Schmitt’s nephew.

Moritz, with his ‘techno-efficiency’ approach and his mission to squeeze every pfennig of profit from every single grape…Moritz was the sole reason Heinrich had decided that maybe 62 was not, after all, too early to retire.

As he went to his locker to collect his flat cap and work jacket, Heinrich passed the door to one of the cellar storerooms and decided to have a look round. Not a final look, Moritz had assured him not to be a stranger.

He walked into dimly lit store, smelling dust, the cool earth floor and the old bottles laid down to rest.

Here was rack after rack of bottled wine. From the pick of the latest harvest, on through the years until the dust and cobwebs lay thick on the prized selection in the far corner, where the oldest wines from the 1800s were stored. Through the vintages Heinrich walked, from the bottles which marked the start of his career, to the rare wines collected during the wars.

Then, with a shelf all to itself, came the most famous wine the vineyard had ever produced. The 1970 Eiswein: Neirsteiner Kranzberg.

 

Eiswein was a skilled creation. A blend of accidental conditions and extraordinary human response. Grapes frozen solid on the vine had to be picked and pressed before the slightest thaw set in.

The dessert wine – 30% sugar, aged to produce an unforgettable nectar - could only be made on those occasional years when autumn snapped too suddenly into winter.