The 2023s, phenolic ripeness and dilution?

I am currently tasting a lot of 2023s … mostly to my pleasure, but to be honest, I am a bit worried about some with signs of dilution, lack of energy, and freshness.

As we all know by now, 2023 yields were (in some cases) enormous – sometimes more than 100 hl/ha. Although this amount of wine was hopefully not harvested, dilution and excessive yields will be detectable in quite a few cases.

My view of the reds is quite firm … not much more than 45 hl/ha … and this is sometimes even optimistic. In many cases, de-budding and furthermore green-harvest was necessary to keep the yield down … sometimes cutting the possible harvest in half.

This led to a tremendous amount of green harvest and, in some cases, an extra extraction of the wines to hide the dilution in the wines – high yields can sometimes come at a serious cost.

Dilution Symptoms and problems

The base character of the 2023s is vivid and quite fresh, and rarely with denser and darker fruits dominating the wines.