Chardonnay

We’ve been picking Chardonnay the last two days. Yesterday the vineyard Neusatz had its turn; here we left a lot of botrytised clusters

hanging on the vines.

The grapes from our parcels in Bartsatz, Perisch, Torwartl and the bottom part of Tatschler were perfect.

Now the individual lots will be pressed and the juice drawn into casks.

www.kollwentz.at

Harvesting our Sauvignon Blanc in the vineyard Steinmühle.

The berries in a cluster of Sauvignon Blanc grapes sit rather tightly together, and thus are very susceptible to developing noble rot—Botrytis cinerea.

We could’ve picked some three quarters of these grapes ten days ago, but they weren’t quite ripe enough at that point.

Now they are fully ripened, but a good half of them are affected with noble rot.

At this juncture, the precise phase of the noble rot is of critical importance for the pickers.

If the botrytised berries are still firm and free of fungal growth, a cluster with 20% such grapes can be taken.

All clusters with with a greater proportion of incipient Botrytis as well as clusters whose berries already show a film of mold are left hanging on the vine.

There is a really good chance that we’ll be able to harvest a Beerenauslese or even a Trockenbeerenauslese in a couple of weeks.

www.kollwentz.at

Blaufränkisch harvest in our Ried Setz...

And there’s joy among the pickers!

With the Blaufränkisch, we’ve managed to harvest more by ten in the morning than we did all day yesterday.

The grapes are 100% healthy and sweet, with thick skins—so we’ll keep it moving right along, up-tempo.

 

www.kollwentz.at

Our Pinot Noir Dürr is in the cellar!

We had fifteen pickers at work in Ried Dürr, harvesting the Pinot Noir (.84 hectares, just over 2 acres),

and still we almost ran out of daylight.

Here we were also obliged to select the grapes very carefully, which left us with a very modest yield of some 20 hectolitres per hectare.

(For the record, 67.5 hecto/hectare are permitted in Austria.)

If this wine turns out well, then the work we’ve put in here throughout the year will have proved worthwhile.

Tomorrow we’ll be picking Blaufränkisch, and are already looking forward to it!

www.kollwentz.at

Zweigelt is in the house!

We’ve finally had some sunshine, warmth and wind...

Breezes from out of the east are drying out the clusters;

the reduction in moisture promotes an increase in the sugar content of the berries as well.

Now we’re finished harvesting the first grape variety, the Zweigelt.

We’ll be happy for many more lovely days like these!

www.kollwentz.at

A difficult year

After 100 litres of rain per square metre fell over the weekend, we’re getting on with the harvest.

Rot has already destroyed part of our crop.

We’re having to go through the vines and rather roughly cut away any affected clusters;

even though this means that we lose some healthy berries as well, we must make certain that no grapes damaged by rot find their way into the cellar.

The results are somehow better than we had feared, after the last couple weeks of awful weather;

we remain ardently hopeful still, for some dry and windy days…

www.kollwentz.at

The 2014 Harvest at Kollwentz

After having experienced ideal weather conditions this growing season – at least up until the last three weeks – we got started with the harvest on Tuesday. The wet weather, which still persists, encourages the development of botrytis cinerea; depending on the ripeness of the affected grapes this can take the form of sour rot or noble rot…

This fungus perforates the grape skin and alters the constituent material of the berries, which can be a good thing for sweet wines – but for dry whites and especially for reds it’s just plain poison. Under our current damp and warm conditions, the botrytis mold opens the port of entry to development of sour rot (literally ‘vinegar rot’).

So for two weeks we’ve been occupied with carefully removing any affected grapes from the clusters. Now during the harvest, our pickers examine the health of every single grape. Affected berries and partial clusters – even whole clusters – are sorted out and discarded in the vineyard. Only healthy grapes find their way into the cellar-house.

The expenditure of effort involved with picking our Zweigelt, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc increases enormously. Up to this point, the weather has wrought no lasting damage upon the later ripening varieties Chardonnay, Blaufränkisch and Cabernet Sauvignon. And we hope that the weather will get better soon!

www.kollwentz.at