The Winter 2012 / 2013 was very cold and lasted long, the first half of the year was cool and wet. In June a hail storm destroyed a part of the blossoms. The late florescence took several weeks, only some blossoms were pollenized. July and august were sunny and warm, nature caught up.
September was always changing nice to foul and back.
We waited with the harvest until October 20th to give the grapes the longest possible time to ripe, then the wet- warm weather forced us to start a speedy grape picking. The result: all musts have Prädikat-Quality, but with ca. 25 hl/ha the Quantity is the smallest since 33 years.
To fill up our portfolio we had to declassify many musts. Thus we are able to offer fine Guts- and Ortsweine.
We had some grapes to produce a GG or a Spätlese. But the amount was too small for a separate bottling, so we decided to put those Qualities into the next smaller wines.
And in order to assure the high standard of our wines, we didn’t produce any higher Prädikate.
Rausch and Bockstein Kabinett present themselves rich in extract, elegant and with a living, long remaining taste. We never had higher extracts in a Kabinett wine then in this vintage.
To sum up: Small but nice! Those wines, we have bottled, are making fun.