For a long time, Saxony was considered Germany's northernmost wine-growing region.
Schleswig-Holstein has been heavily involved since 2009.
The weather didn’t exactly play into the cards for the winemakers in the north this year.
Malkwitz - The grape harvest is in full swing at the Ingenhof winery in Malkwitz in the Ostholstein district.
The hand-picked grapes wait in large boxes to be processed into Sauvignon Gris, a white wine with a light rosé tone.
“This year was not an easy wine year,” says Melanie Engel from Ingenhof.
“It was very wet in August and in September we had fewer hours of sunshine than usual.
Nevertheless, we are very satisfied with the quality. "
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In addition to strawberries and raspberries, Engel has been growing wine on the 300 hectare farm in Holstein Switzerland since 2009.
The Ingenhof is one of currently around ten wine-growing businesses in Schleswig-Holstein.
Others are in Grebin, in the Westensee Nature Park near Kiel, in Bargteheide at the gates of Hamburg and on the North Sea islands of Sylt and Föhr.
"Currently in Schleswig-Holstein wine is grown on an area of around 30 hectares," says Wolf Gehrmann from the Consumer Protection Ministry of the State of Schleswig-Holstein.
According to Gehrmann's information, 40,200 liters of wine were harvested in Schleswig-Holstein in 2020.
"In terms of quantity, a good vintage is expected this year, so that the harvest should be significantly higher," says Gehrmann.
This is also confirmed by Christian Roeloff, managing director of the Waalem winery on the North Sea island of Föhr. “The harvest volumes are almost never this year. With the Solaris grape variety that we are currently harvesting, we expect a yield of 6500 to 7000 liters per hectare, ”says Roeloff. Mainly the varieties Solaris, Regent and Cabernet Cortis are grown in the northernmost state.
So far, Saxony has been the northernmost of the 13 German wine-growing regions.
Today, wine is also grown in Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, says Ernst Büscher, the press spokesman for the German Wine Institute in Bodenheim in Rhineland-Palatinate.
"Since the 1970s, viticulture in Germany has shifted around 300 kilometers to the north," says Büscher.
This was also made possible by new breeds that required less sun and are more resistant to fungal attack.
The vintners in the classic wine-growing regions see the expansion of viticulture mostly as positive, says Büscher.
“That can help to identify with Germany as a wine country,” he says.
The new winemakers in Schleswig-Holstein go to their work with a lot of enthusiasm, and setbacks are inevitable.
"In the months that are important for wine, it was very wet and cold, so that many grapes were affected by noble rot," say Jörn Andresen and Leon Zijlstra from the Schatoh Feldmark winery in Bargteheide in the Stormarn district.
“Still, we harvested five tons of Solaris, which is not bad to start with,” they say.
dpa