The year has been cooler and more difficult than in other years. The real challenge is getting in ripe grapes with flavours and structure.
The most important aspect is picking out the ripe grapes by hand and then sorting them in the vineyard, before they are dropped into the bucket. As we also pick our late harvest noble grapes at a later stage from the same vineyard, no machine harvester can substitute our hard working pickers. The Sauvignon Blanc grapes couldn’t quite reach our desired ripeness levels of pure tropical fruit flavours. The grapes were too fragile to leave them longer outside, as the Botrytis was starting to spread out. So we just picked the best ones out by hand. These grapes have nice flavours of gooseberry, grapefruit and sometimes peaches. As you can imagine, the crop is smaller, and we will have a shortage of Sauvignon Blanc. We will see if we are able to produce a Sauvignon Blanc Ouvertüre (our Primeur for the German market) … but probably not…
We have also been busy picking Pinot Noir. A part of it has been pressed off as a Blanc de Noir and will be bottled as a Methode Traditionelle.
We are also proud to be able to pick wonderful ripe Reserve Pinot Noir.
During redwine fermentation, where the juice ferments together with the skins, tannins and colour are extracted from the skins. Unfortunately the fermentation gases raise the skins so they float on top, and are not leeched out by the fermenting juice. So intense punch down is needed to mix up the skins with the juice. The total time on skins ranges between 2 and 4 weeks depending on the wine.
The quality from this very cool year is surprisingly good with dark flavours, intense colours and a great structure on the palate.
If you are interested in what it tastes like, please just visit us during harvest and we can give you a sample to taste.
As the harvest ends in about 2 weeks time, the first ferments show results beyond expectation.
