News 2018

Happy Holidays and a Good New Year!

The year is coming to an end and it starts to be a little quieter again. The only thing left for us is to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and a great start into the New Year 2019. Hopefully some of our great Sonnenmulde wines will accompany you at some of the festivities!

Icewine

Years of waiting are over. Thursday morning we were finally able to harvest Icewine once again. It did not come completely unexpected tough. Forecasts predicted a tight chance more than a week ago already. And tight it was, but also just cold enough!

Grapes have to be thoroughly frozen for Icewine (see picture). Harvested that way, they are processed immediately and crushed while their water ist still frozen. Only the concentrated juice is gathered from the press and this explains why Icewine ist so sweet, even after fermentation. The fresh juice’s temperature is still below the freezing point of water and beautiful frost covers the tank it is collected in (see picture on top).

You may taste now

St. Martin’s day is upcoming and with it the 30th incarnation of the Martiniloben Event with days of open wine cellars in Gols. That itself is reason enough for a big party, but even more important are the many fine wines you’ll be able to taste. On St. Martin the new vintage’s wines are baptised and may be officially refered to as wines from then on. The preparations are already well underway an we’re looking forward to lots of visitors!

From the harvest

It’s not even mid-September and we’re already thinking about the end of the harvest. We’re not done yet and there are more grapes to be picked. But a good part of this year’s vintage is already fermenting in our cellar. And it does look good indeed!

Starlings - not our friends

Starlings are beautiful, very intelligent birds and were even chosen as Bird of the Year 2018 in Germany. Nevertheless, the’re not really our friends. Like many other bird species they like it a lot around Lake Neusiedl. Alltough many of them live here around the year, every autumn they are visited by lots of collegues that prefer to spend their summers farther to the north. In that time they form swarms up to kilometers in length that can even darken the sky. And that many beaks need to eat.

Harvest 2018

The year of the earliest harvest of all times. Never before we started picking our grapes on the 20th of August, but yesterday we did. We brought in ripe, healthy Grüner Veltliner grapes. They were from a young vineyard that does not yet yield as much and ripens earlier, but still. Climate change is here and we have to deal with its effects.

The fast-motion summer

Summer 2018 will be remembered as the quickest of all times, at least where grapevines are concerned. An early start into the growing season, no destructive frost events and just the right amount of rain led to a vintage that could not be better.

How is the wire mounted in a vineyard?

Vines are grown in a wire trellis. We re-planted an old vineyard earlier this year and also renewed all the wiring and support for that occasion. Therefore we mounted more than 35 km wire this week.

Everything is growing

The growing season is moving along with great strides. Just as every year at this point, we have lots of work to do but only little time to tell about it. But still, everything is going smoothly and despite all the work we are really happy with the current development.

Wine and the spring

Again it happened really fast. Less than a month ago we still experienced frosty nights and now temperatures are almost reaching 30° C during the day. Just like in the last couple of years our vines started growing early and the season is underway.

Tour Germany 2018

When days are becoming longer again we start with lots of wine tastings into every new year. The MillésimeBIO was a nice beginning but now we head into a tour through Germany. The dates are arragend in such a way that we will visit three cities on three consecutive weekends in February - WeinHannover, WeinFrühling Berlin and WeinFrühling Hamburg in just that Order. We are looking forward to many visitors and interesting tastings!

Winter Pruning

The current winter has not yet shown its grim side and it has been relatively warm all through the holiday season and the past weeks. We use the opportunity to go out pruning our vines as long as the sun is shining.