Picking the Gloria

We’ve got magnificent weather for harvesting Ried Gloria – and the grapes are simply marvellous!

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Chardonnay!

We have been picking Chardonnay since Monday, starting with our Leithakalk, then the Ried Neusatz, and now we are in Ried Katterstein. 

The grapes are fully ripened and very sweet.

The vine leaves in the cluster zone are beginning to change colour – an unmistakable sign of full maturity.

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Harvesting our Zweigelt

Contrary to what one might have expected, the rain in recent days did only slight damage to our Zweigelt grapes – they are crunchy in texture and taste very sweet.

 

We hardly have to discard any at all.

 

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Picking in the Steinmühle

Today we have a cold morning. We are harvesting our Sauvignon Blanc in the Ried Steinmühle. Spicy and healthy grapes, just like it ought to be.

 

The starlings have been a colossal nuisance in the past couple days,

and we are very glad that Mario and Dragan have been protecting the grapes from them for ten days now.

 

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The harvest commences – our earliest ever!

Today is the 23rd of August, and we are picking our Pinot Noir in Ried Dürr.

 

It's really time to get this done, because you can see that some berries are already shrivelling up because of the heat,

and exhibiting a bit of a golf-ball-texture on the surface.

 

Because of the high temperatures, we start picking at 6.00 and knock off at noon.

 

The clusters will spend the night in our cool-storage repository until early tomorrow morning,

when they will be de-stemmed and deposited in the pre-chilled maceration tank.

 

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Hanging the wires

The young vines in our Ried Katterstein have grown quite beautifully, and the trellis wires are being installed.

 

They help the vines to grow in the proper direction.

 

Now that the green harvest is finished, we have the time to do this.

 

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Green harvest

2018's vineyard vegetation cycle strides forward, and we are currently occupied with the green harvest, also called 'thinning-out'.

 

This process reduces the number of clusters hanging on each vine, guaranteeing plenty of sunshine and grapes of optimal ripeness.

 

… and it takes about as much time as the actual harvest itself will.

 

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