so-called autumn courier – Herbstkurier. In 1775, for some reason, the courier sent out by the abbey at Fulda was delayed for 14 days. According to some, the abbey's messenger was robbed on the way to bring the official harvest picking order. By the time the order finally arrived noble rot had set in, but the harvest was carried out anyway, although no high hopes were staked on the wine from the rotten grapes. But rather than a failed product, the wine turned out to be surprisingly good. Schloss Johannisberg began actively seeking to produce late harvest – Spätlese – wines affected by noble rot. The delayed courier therefore became referred to as the Spätlesereiter. In 1778 Thomas Jefferson tasted a bottle of Spätlese that was given to him and was so impressed that he advised friends who were in Europe to go to the Rheingau to experience the wines and bring a case back to America. Additional Prädikat levels Terminology for different levels of late harvest wines, based on grape selection, were then introduced starting with Auslese ("Select harvest") being introduced in 1787, and additional levels added later. The key to these developments was selection of bunches and grapes by level of ripeness and botrytis, thus giving different wines from the same vineyard. Therefore, the initial Spätlese terminology was for any late harvest wine, and the initial 1775 Spätlese wine was made from grapes that were affected by noble rot to the extent that they appeared unpalatable, and gave a very sweet wine. Such a wine would not really correspond to a modern-day Spätlese. Grapes of this character, vinified by themselves would rather give a Beerenauslese in modern terminology, and if bunches of such botrytis-affected grapes were mixed with more or less healthy bunches, it seems likely that the wine would be classed in the upper end of the Auslese range. Later history In the 1971 German wine law, the Spätlese Prädikat was given its present interpretation. In the early post-World War II era, the semi-sweet wines that Germany for long has been associated with became more common, since new methods by stopping fermentation and using Süssreserve were introduced. The Spätlese wines represents the "high end" of these semi-sweet, rather than fully sweet, wines, since they are not allowed to be chaptalized. From the 1980s, and even more from the 1990s, production of dry wines became much more common