This year's wine harvest is not yet fully completed, but most of our grapes have been picked by now, leaving only the late ripening Cabernet Sauvignon awaiting it's harvest. Thus it is already time fo a first overview of the current vintage.
The humid conditions in August and early September demanded a lot of flexibility and required us to change our plans for several times during the harvest. We had to pick some varieties earlier than expected and manually select only the ripest and best grapes to achieve sufficient qualities. Other varieties had to wait and were therefore harvested a bit later. This makes it likely that our assortment will be somewhat different this year, let's see.
So what's the current state? Most of the Whites are still fermenting except the Junger Welschriesling and the Rosé that are more or less done. Both will be bottled in about two weeks time, making them our first 2014 young wines. Some of the Reds have already finished fermentation and are developing a full body and flavour. Only at the very heavy end there will be some trade-offs this year. So it is likely that we won't have a 2014 Capella. The Zweigelt grapes were just not ripe enough. On the other hand we think this year's Blaufränkisch to be very promising. Maybe we'll have a Barrique for the first time afther more than ten years.
One thing is clear in a year that has been as far from optimal as 2014. Good wines can only be made by flexibly and knowingly reacting to the vintages demands. Adhering to a pre-set year after year scheme won't yield any good wines to speak of. We think we've done quite well. The first young wines will be here, acting as proof quite soon and we are eagerly awaiting them.