For well over five years now, vom Boden has been offering an unparalleled deep-dive into one of the most magical and curious facets of German wine culture: the German wine auctions.
The 2024 German wine auctions will unfurl, back-to-back, on the following dates:
Thursday, November 7th: The Bernkasteler Ring Auction
Friday, November 8th: The Mosel VDP Auction
Saturday, November 9th: The Ahr-Nahe-Pfalz-Rheinhessen VDP Auction
While the easy selling line for these auctions is something like, “This is your chance to buy the greatest and rarest wines of Germany!” – and that line is 100% true – I think it undermines, or at least takes a detour around, the beautiful human tradition of the event. It pushes to the side what’s really important about all this, like selling the Statue of Liberty based on the incredible views of New York City it affords.
The greater, more important truth of these auctions is the acknowledgment of just how complicated terroir is, just how little we really understand and can explain. Some barrels, some vineyards, some parcels are just better than others. These auctions celebrate this. For more on the magic and the history of these auctions, click here.
If you would like to bid, vom Boden will once again be providing complete consulting, bidding and logistics services for clients in the U.S.
PLEASE REACH OUT ASAP FOR A BIDDING SHEET. ALL BIDS MUST BE PLACED BY FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST. Email orders@vomboden.com
If you are interested in bidding, we should state this clearly: While there are always some incredibly high prices paid, there are also a lot of affordable wines sold at the auction. This isn’t going to be bargain shopping; but you don’t have to wear an ascot to bid either.
For example, how about a wine sourced from 115-year-old, ungrafted vines and the opening bid is 12 Euros? Does that sound interesting? It’s in our bidding sheet.
I think we can uniquely help you find the deals and give you tips on the growers and the wines – and we do this because we are wine lovers. Yes, we taste with and buy from Keller, Lauer, Willi Schaefer, Emrich-Schönleber and all the big names. But it is also a significant point of pride that we seek out the surprises and sleeper-hits as well – the values. (Again, you’ll find them in our bidding sheet and you can get the bidding sheet by emailing us at orders@vomboden.com.)
In the U.S. at least, I don’t think there is anyone else in this as deeply as we are.
thoughts on the 2024 auctions
To some extent, the strength of the auction is based on the strength of the preceding vintage. While growers may offer wines from any back vintage (Emrich-Schönleber, for example, is offering a 2005 TBA), normally the major thrust of the event is the preceding vintage. So for the 2024 auctions, the lots will be focusing on the 2023 vintage in Germany.
And the truth of vintage 2023 is complex. It was not an easy vintage, that is true. Simultaneously, some estates made absolutely stellar, truly mind-blowing wines that will easily hold their own with nearly any other top wine of any vintage. So, in 2023 you have to be more selective, but there is greatness. You can read my full vintage report if you’d like, click here.
AND: As I said last year (and was correct, mostly), my guess is that buying will be softer this year for many of the wines not in the white-hot spotlight. The wine world is going through a bit of a reset, which is not an easy thing for many of us, but it does present the potential for very serious deals. This year, more than any year I can think of in the decade-plus I’ve been buying at the auctions, I would expect some crazy values to present themselves.
On top of that, vintage 2024 in Germany, which just wrapped up, sounds from what we hear extraordinary, in two ways. Extraordinary quality (vintage 2021 has been referenced many times as the easiest comparison) and extraordinarily low quantities: There were horrible frosts in the spring and then the harvest was not easy, so quantities are absurd. In other words, we may not see many deals next year.
Our bidding sheet goes over all of our top picks, as well as the potential values and overlooked gems we’ve found. You will have to email us at orders@vomboden.com to get a copy of this bidding sheet. To be honest, it’s a lot of work; the sheet reflects a lot of time and labor (and love) on our part. It doesn’t feel right to simply paste it online.
Please note you may bid on any wine you’d like. Our bidding sheet skips numerous wines either because we didn’t taste them or they just didn’t excite us. However, this is all wildly subjective, so we are happy to bid on your behalf for anything you might be interested in. When we send you our bidding sheets, we will send you catalogues for all three auctions so you can shop for yourself.
That said, here are a few noteworthy points and things we’re excited about!
We dipped our toes into this auction with some serious excitement last year. With the VDP auctions now getting more and more interest, we figured the periphery would be interesting. While we weren’t wowed last year, there feels to me more excitement and potential this year. Carl Loewen, Loersch (a favorite estate of ours in Trittenheim), Franzen and a few other estates have what look to be very interesting wines. For the value-hunter looking for some special and rare things, we have selected over ten lots that we think are very exciting, with bids starting at as low as 12 Euro! There will be quite a few wines that hammer for between 20 and 30 Euros.
The biggest news here is, unfortunately, an absence: Egon Müller will have no wines at this year’s auction, which feels to me historic. The 2023 vintage is exceptional at Müller; tasting with Egon this summer I was blown away, even with the always-high expectations. The wines are screaming with acid. But the vineyard suffered during the year and the yields were microscopic. There is just so little wine.
Lauer has his normal range of wines, including the mysterious Lambertskirch GG and a trio of Prädikat wines, from the (for me) famous Kupp Kabinett #5 to the Kupp Spätlese #23. For this year, there is also a Feils Auslese, which is cool.
The biggest news for me though? Lauer is auctioning off Kabinett and Spätlese Jeros – 3.0Ls! Gulp.
There are a few fun surprises, but I think the real story in the Mosel – especially with Egon out of the game this year – rests with J.J. Prüm and Willi Schaefer.
Prüm will offer only the second auction Kabinett of many decades, which is thrilling for us Kabinett fans. And, even more thrilling, I suspect it will trade at a considerably lower price than the 2021, which went for a staggering 405 Euros – maybe even 50% lower? I could see this going for around 200 Euros or less. There is no universe in which this wine is 50% of the quality of the 2021.
Willi Schaefer – meaning Christoph and his wife Andrea – brings to the auction what has to be the single-greatest collection of this auction. While Schaefer is offering good quantities of both the Kabinett and the Spätlese (thereby, hopefully, keeping prices in line with last year), they are also offering a staggering 99+ point Mosel Fine Wines Auslese (this equates to about 135 points from any other reviewer)… and there are only 24 bottles, 36 half-bottles and 1 magnum of this wine.
My easy prediction of the auction? The single-magnum of Willi Schaefer Auslese will be the most expensive wine of this auction.
While it feels easy and obvious to boil down this wonderful auction to Keller – especially after my introduction – that’s probably where we are with this specific auction.
Now, if you’re paying attention, this means the flip-side is I expect some soft(er) pricing and some very good deals on the time-tested trophies of this auction: Wittmann’s “La Borne,” Schäfer-Fröhlich’s “Final” and Emrich-Schönleber’s Auf der Ley GG. These are all superb, superb wines – do not miss.
As for Keller, well, I’m sentimental. I’ve known Klaus Peter for about as long as I’ve known most of my core growers/friends, including Stein and Lauer.
So for me, the wines of his 50th year, are significant because they mark an important moment for my friend. This likely doesn’t, and shouldn’t, matter to you.
What should matter to you is the knowledge that KP is not going to miss the opportunity to blow-up any and all expectations of what this vintage would, should or could do – especially since his birthyear, 1973, is a bit of a washout. And in 2023, the steep vineyards of Nierstein and Piesporter (Hipping, Pettenthal and Schubertslay, respectively) produced staggering wines of heartbreaking genius.
Given the state of the universe, maybe pricing will be soft-ish?
Then again, Keller is maybe not from this universe, so don’t count on it.
If you have any questions at all about the 2024 auctions, or would like to request a bidding sheet, please email us at orders@vomboden.com.