Harvest 2005 Finished – Almost
14. November 2005 | 09:08
An incredibly beautiful first half of November allowed us to conclude the harvest of the most important vineyards. Heiligenstein, Käferberg and Lamm were harvested under perfect conditions and under a brilliant autumn sun.
The berries have a wonderful flavour. Every berry has its own aromas and the sum of these will make for complex wine personalities, a patchwork, a soundscape of the most different notes, colours, flavours, and aromas.
Generally it appears that dry, hilly vineyards relatively high up were advantaged. In the plains or close to water the grapes began to rot more early and struggled to get ripe.
For various reasons the harvest will be much smaller than expected. Firstly, the buds were much less fertile because of the hard winter 2004/05. An unusually bushy growth also made it necessary to eliminate many shoots to retain an airy, well-ventilated leaf surface, which also helped us to fight against the early rot accompanying the summer rains.
The first fully fermented wines confirm the strengths of the vintage: clear fruit, no trace of heaviness, very typical varietal aromas.
A small part of our grapes is still in the vineyards. We are hoping to harvest nobly sweet wines (Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese) when these berries dry out and shrivel to raisin size.
