Wine Diary
Wonderful Harvesting Days!
This warm and sunny Autumn weather is not only a blessing to our people in the vineyards; all fruit is rapidly gaining sweetness and character as well. Pre-harvest and also picking of grapes for Sparkling wines is considered completed! For Sekt we brought in some very fine small lots of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Zweigelt, St. Laurent and some Grüner. All are now in primary fermentation filling our cellar with enticing aromas of exotic fruit and fresh yeast.
Now Zweigelt grapes have reached the required ripeness to lend fruit and enough freshness to our popular Zweigelt Rosé.
To our surprise, we get in almost spotlessly clean, fully ripe and incredibly aromatic Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris) at the same time. The grapes come from “Spiegel” - one of our top vineyards - with densities of around 90° Ö (19° KMW)! Only very rarely do we find tiny spots of over-ripeness in the dense bunches of thin skinned berries: Our very seasoned harvesters cut those bunches in two and clean them or, in more extreme cases, remove them completely.
The smaller Weißburgunder (Pinot Blanc) vineyards on “Spiegel” will wait a little longer while we continue to bring in Pinot Gris and Zweigelt.
High Spirits in the cellar!
Our cellar folks are in harvest mode and extremely concentrated. We all are aware of the fact that we are now building the bases of our next year's business and for, hopefully, one more great vintage.
The forecast predicts some wet, cooler weather for the weekend. That should do no harm! Having accomplished our canopy management, now the vines are well-aired, and we now focused on the ground between the vines: two trained tractor drivers are out keeping the green spaces between the rows short and mechanically clearing the sprouting weeds from the soil around the vines.