This month even the ‘museum of modern Ahrts’ will be opened to keep the remembrance of the flooding alive by showcasing objects that are also preserved as NFTs in the blockchain. Because let’s be honest, the Ahr valley and its wines haven’t been getting the attention it deserves. They want to contribute to both long-term support for the wineries of the Ahr valley as well as reposition the Ahr valley as an innovative wine region. Daniel Koller together with Peter Kriechel initiated the campaign as a fundraiser. An NFT for a bottle of Ahr ‘flood wine’ (‘Flutwein’) even achieved a record price with €30.000. We want to remember what happened and pay our respects. The heavy rainfall prior to the flooding didn’t aid the vineyards, but in the end the old vines were relatively safe.Ī year on, we find ourselves in a position that we still want to help. For example, the Gärkammer Spätburgunder vines are up to one hundred years old and haven’t been touched by the flooding. However, the wineries tell me that the more high-quality vineyards have been saved due to the higher elevation of the vineyards. Areas directly by the river are kept clear, to give the Ahr river some space.Īs the Ahr valley is most well-known for their Pinot Noir, locally known as Spätburgunder, this finicky grape variety could have been severely injured by the flood. The more obvious and smarter move is that new buildings in the region will be built higher up in comparison to before the flood. Preventive measures are being planned, but not yet put into practice. Which is understandable as there hasn’t been a flood like this before to react to. However, it is apparent that this was not adequate in this situation. Kreuzberg tells me that there have been precautions taken before this even happened. However, some wineries report that they’ve lost one or two complete vintages. Downy mildew is a type of fungus that infests the grapevines, especially in wet conditions such as July in 2021 here. Kreuzberg had similar issues with peronospora, naturally some loss of yield in quantity. They’ve lost about 10% to peronospora (downy mildew) and an additional 10% due to the flood. They could eventually harvest everything they wanted thanks to this help.Īt the award winning Weingut Kriechel they had the biggest problems with crop protection, as evident. External help came to their aid, meaning they could take care of the crops while the family could save belongings and the buildings. He, however does state that it was a challenging vintage due to crop protection. Peter Kriechel, the winery in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler is also saying that the quality was great. “A perfect vintage 2021”, which might sound strange. The quantity wasn’t great, but the quality was. They had great help from wineries of other regions to harvest. The one week of terrible weather was the only downfall. Britta Stodden of Jean Stodden states of the vintage that it was “excellent”. The 2021 vintage was a year on which different wineries have different opinions. Rainfall throughout the whole Mosel River caused by the excess of water was a natural disaster that not only lead to heavy destruction on the people and their homes, but also for the wines and vineyards of the Ahr valley. In the end 75% of the valley’s inhabitants were struck. Both the Ahr and Mosel River burst outside its banks and destroyed 3000 of the 4200 buildings in the Ahr valley. In 2021, 134 people passed away due to the disastrous event and billions of euros of damage was inflicted throughout Germany.Īn extreme amount of rainfall preceded the flooding. The storm tide of 1962 in Hamburg cost the most lives, with 315. On the 14 and 15 of July 2021, just after Bastille Day in France, disaster struck in Germany in the form of the second most deadly flooding on record.
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