At the end of October we brought the harvest to its conclusion with two Trockenbeerenauslesen: a Chardonnay and a Scheurebe.
And in the meantime we can offer some initial comments about the 2014 vintage.
The foundation for outstanding wines is more and more clearly – by means of conscientious canopy management and cultivation of the soil – laid in the vineyards.
Because of the great amount of rain this year, the foliage canopies had to be be sculpted into a trim and well-ventilated form.
Again and again we removed single leaves and individual shoots, in order to bring the sun and wind to the leaves – and above all to the clusters.
This year we let our greencover grow, in the vine-rows as well as in the lanes between them, so it could act to regulate the growth of the grapevines.
Up till the 25th of August, the development of the grapes was perfect.
But this was followed by a series of days with fog and heavy dewfall, without the wind that normally blows so dependably in Burgenland.
On top of this, right before and during the start of the harvest, we had huge downpours, and the berries of early-ripening vines like Zweigelt, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir
began to develop rot, to a point where where the necessary selection in the vineyards cost a great deal of time and significantly reduced the quantity of the harvest.
As the harvest progressed, the weather got steadily better, and so after a stringent selection process we could bring the Chardonnays and the Blaufränkisch as well as the Cabernet Sauvignon,
little by little, into the cellar.
And in the end, all these trials of the difficult vintage 2014 brought with them the ideal conditions for harvesting noble sweet wines –
so we have three Trockenbeerenauslesen and one Beerenauslese to show for one week of the most rigorous berry-by-berry selection.
This allowed the current vintage, so problematic as it was in terms of external conditions,
to ultimately shine forth in a much brighter light than we had dared to imagine at the beginning of September!
Here in the Ried Steinmühle we see the promising results of an extremely rigorous grape-by-grape selection.
Right adjacent to wonderfully botrytised berries we find grapes that have been spoiled by the vinegar-files—and on top of this there are still a few isolated green and healthy berries on the vines.
This is anything but easy to pick!
It took us three days, but we manage to pull it off—we (ten pickers at work) harvested 540 kilograms of botrytised grapes.
This will yield us 250 litres of Sauvignon Blanc Trockenbeerenauslese.
Anton Kollwentz Sr. had to think long and hard before he could recall a harvest when selection in the vineyard was this challenging — and that was in 1973!
Indian Summer brought us fog in the early morning and late-afternoon sunshine —the ideal conditions for developing noble rot.
The Chardonnay was picked and placed into colour-coded plastic tubs -- botrytis-berries in the brightly coloured containers, grey ones for the green and healthy grapes.
In one day we were able to harvest 370 litres of Beerenauslese and 80 litres of "green juice."
The first pass through the vineyard Gloria yielded grapes that were totally healthy and very ripe.
The weather could not be better — sunny and not too warm; should remain so for the next few days of the harvest.
We couldn't be happier!
