Wine Diary
Home Straight
The taste of the grapes has clearly changed now.
The direct freshness is gone, replaced by an almost decadent sweetness and spice. Changes have occurred within the berries which usually take place only in the wine. The cold has reduced the acidity as it usually would do during the winter in the cellar.
The stems are not fragile, a gust of wind is enough to shake individual berries or entire grapes off the vine. Compared to our September harvest the amounts per hectare are considerably reduced. Falling berries, evaporation, our beloved friends from the animal kingdom (birds, deer, wild boar), hungry ramblers and other tourists all work together to reduce the harvest. The quality of these late grapes, however, will be extraordinary.
Out of sheer enthusiasm we are trying comparable vintages of our wines, most recently together with the Alsatian cheese master Bernard Antony at our Heurigenhof: 2003, 2000, 1997, 1994, 1992, 1971 – vintages which are comparable in some way, and great vintages down to the last one.
The best guarantee for the ageing potential of a wine are grapes full of taste, harvested without haste and entirely healthy, which were vinified carefully, always with quality as the absolute priority.
The one thing that is absolutely necessary is a perfect cellar with a uniformly cool temperature for maturation without loss of fruit.
This time, the photos were taken not by Willi or Edwige Bründlmayer, but by our friend the photographer and musician Johnny Schütten.