I was in Germany last weekend* and everyone was complaining, as in the rest of Europe, about the harshness of the winter. Frankfurt airport had been overwhelmed by snow the previous day. In the eastern German wine regions of Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut, temperatures have fallen so low that it is feared that a substantial proportion of vines will have been killed, just as in the winter of 2008/09. Klaus Peter Keller of Rheinhessen sends these photographs of his Frauenberg vineyard, in which the snow has been so deep that he has been unable to get in and prune it. As he says, 'when we planted the vineyard with Pinot Noir 11...