The 2014 Harvest at Kollwentz

12 Sep 2014 – General

After having experienced ideal weather conditions this growing season – at least up until the last three weeks – we got started with the harvest on Tuesday.

The wet weather, which still persists, encourages the development of botrytis cinerea; depending on the ripeness of the affected grapes this can take the form of sour rot or noble rot…

This fungus perforates the grape skin and alters the constituent material of the berries, which can be a good thing for sweet wines – but for dry whites and especially for reds it’s just plain poison. Under our current damp and warm conditions, the botrytis mold opens the port of entry to development of sour rot (literally ‘vinegar rot’).

So for two weeks we’ve been occupied with carefully removing any affected grapes from the clusters. Now during the harvest, our pickers examine the health of every single grape. Affected berries and partial clusters – even whole clusters – are sorted out and discarded in the vineyard. Only healthy grapes find their way into the cellar-house.

The expenditure of effort involved with picking our Zweigelt, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc increases enormously. Up to this point, the weather has wrought no lasting damage upon the later ripening varieties Chardonnay, Blaufränkisch and Cabernet Sauvignon. And we hope that the weather will get better soon!