Whilst in the Southern Hemisphere Spring has arrived and vineyards are going through budburst, across the Northern Hemisphere our growers are gearing up for harvest, in fact some have started. Here are two contrasting reports, one from Campbells in Australia and one from Villa Wolf in the Germany, describing what’s been happening in the vineyards this month.
View Campbell's News Here
VILLA WOLF NEWS
What a year! For the last two vintages we have been dealing with drought conditions and this year we had to deal with cool weather and rain. However, towards the harvest time we started getting some nice weather, and most importantly some sunshine.
In our estate vineyards we are in the final transition year before we can be officially certified as organic, so with the 2022 vintage we will be officially certified. You may hear a lot about how much trouble organic producers had in 2021 due to the disease issues, but if you work hard and smart in your vineyards you can succeed even without pesticides. We think the 2021 vintage will show that good producers can work organically and still have some decent yields come harvest time.
We have already started our harvest, which began at the estate with our base wine for our Brut Nature Riesling Sekt from the Wachenheimer Goldbächel vineyard. We started our harvest later than the last couple years, but this is not a bad thing as we have longer hang time and a chance for beautifully developed aroma ripeness. Since we are not done with the harvest, we cannot make a prediction how it will all go, but we see wine as a natural product that can vary from vintage to vintage, so we will take what we get and try to make great wines. That is the fun of each new vintage. Stay tuned!