The Stemme is unique among other gliders in several ways, and so are uniquely appealing! Here's how I enjoyed mine:

Stores in a regular T-hangar and able to operate out of even a busy tower controlled field. This allows a business person to leave the office early, get to the airport and unfold the wings, pre-flight, (this just takes minutes), taxi out on conventional retracting gear with wing clearance above signs and such, launch and go soar for a few hours. Ground handling is very good, four of us taxied out in a 35 knot wind, made 4 90 degree turns and launched pretty much vertically at the runway intersection (brag: I went first).. No other high performance glider I'm aware of could do that.

Turbo charged and intercooled, the Stemme can climb out of high and hot airports with no problem. Switching over to power involves little extra drag (a loss of maybe 12-15 L/D until the prop is turning). It handles turbulence with aplomb, soaking up the bumps better than any lighter glider I've flown.

I have a bit over 450 hours in the S10. I flew alongside a Stemme for about 15 miles with my ASH26E (50/1) both gliding straight line in fairly smooth air. He was slowly losing altitude on me the whole time, which was surprising, as I'd flown alongside Marty Hellman's S10 many times and running performance was quite similar. Discussing this on the radio with the other pilot (who shall go unnamed) Terry advised he'd forgotten to close his nose cone and thus his engine cooling vents were open too - for the extra drag, we still wasn't doing too bad, having lost only a few hundred feet on me as I recall :c)