'When the rose hips bloom'

An old saying in Burgenland translates (very) roughly:
'when the rose hips blossom and bloom
a fellow sleeps like he's in the tomb
when the rose hips grow red
you can sleep like the dead'

After last week's heavy rains and this week's bright sunshine, everything is
growing!
We're now working on binding the young vine-shoots onto the wire trellising,

which will keep us occupied over the next few weeks.
And that's but one of many tasks - but more about that soon.

www.kollwentz.at

Kollwentz Steinzeiler 2013

While the rain is falling – currently 111 litres per square metre, which
will last us a while – we've been busy in the cellar!

The Steinzeiler takes shape – the best lots of Blaufränkisch are blended
with small portions of Zweigelt and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Our barriques are washed, then lightly treated with a lit sulfur ring – this
protects the wine from oxidation, as well as sterlising the bunghole of the
barrel.
The casks are then filled and finally painted with red-wine lees.

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Mowing and mulching-there's no end to it!

First we make a pass with the tractor, mulching between the rows. This makes
the more detailed manual work with the motor-scythe much easier.

And when we're done doing this, we start mulching the winter-greencover.

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80 litres of rain in the month of April!

After receiving only minimal rain- and snowfall this past winter, the soils in our vineyards have finally been able this past month to absorb a satisfactory amount of water.

Rain fell on a number of occasions, in an aggregate among of 80 litres per square metre. And with the warm temperatures in the last few days, the burst of growth has been enormous. Not just the vines, but also the greencover between the rows is growing fast, and so we’ve started mulching every other row. The cut grasses can then decompose and return nutrients to the soils. We’ll first start mulching the winter-greenery that we cultivated late in the summer - rye-grass and Vicia Americana -  in about three weeks, which will then serve to benefit the vines at the point when they need it the most  - during blossoming.

 

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Wine in the Mountains, 2014 in Sölden

Let’s get out of the cellar and head for the hills!

…on this occasion it was “Wein am Berg” in Sölden, southwest of Innsbruck in the Tirol.

 

Angelika Falkner from Sölden’s Central Spa Hotel, along with many of Austria’s greatest winegrowers -

Die Renommierten Weingüter Burgenland (Prestige Estates of Burgenland) plus Schönberger, Schwarz, Hirtzberger, F.X. Pichler, Schmelz, Bründlmayer, Seifried, Alphart, Reinisch, Wess, Wieninger, Gross and Sattler -

invited pampered guests to a wine tasting ranging from our base camp at 1300 metres elevation all the way up to the restaurant IceQ at 3048 metres.

 

And of course we had famous chefs on hand to prepare the culinary accompaniment to our wines:

Johann Lafer, Gottfried Prantl, Harald Rindler, Alexander Waschl, Taketoshi Minami, Yau Kim Yew and pâtissier Christoph Lindpointner

were all on hand with knife and ladle...

 

www.kollwentz.at

All of our wines are in the bottle!

After first getting the white wines done, all of the top 2011 red wines have now been bottled--even though they’ll be waiting until September to be shipped.

And of course the red wines come in big bottles as well--ranging from the magnum to the 18-litre Melchior.

 

The bottling tanks are now empty, and the stockrooms are once more halfway full after a long dry spell.

Now we’re labelling the wines and getting them ready for delivery, since the white wines will go on sale at the beginning of May.

 

www.kollwentz.at

On the bottling line

The day when we bottle the wines constitutes a high point on the Kollwentz Estate’s calendar. It’s the ultimate delicate step in the process of our grapes becoming wine. In order to maintain the wine at its highest standard of quality and expressiveness, it is necessary to transfer it as gently as humanly possible from the casks--with only a very delicate filtration--into the bottle. And to ensure the optimum corking, the remaining air space in the bottle is filled instead with CO², which can afterwards dissolve in the wine, and so causes no backpressure inside the bottle. This backpressure is reduced further by directly creating a light vacuum during the corking process. We use corks of the highest quality-grade—they will henceforth accompany the wine on its long road toward maturity.

 

www.kollwentz.at