Category Archives: Vintage

Not much more to report, most of the same. Johannes was away from Nierstein for most of the day and left me to continue the tank markings which I still don’t understand how they managed to create such a mess to begin with. I took a few photos of Johannes putting some CO2 onto some vats of reds fermenting on skins to protect them from oxidation, and they looked cool.

Smoke on the water.

Camera obscura.

After a two day hiatus spent mostly resting on my injured back, I returned to the cellars at Nierstein to continue the tank markings. Most of the red grapes were coming in from the vineyards and were being crushed for cold soaking and in then for some, a fermentation on skins. I also got the chance to plunge a ferment, but this time it was a tank filled with silvaner! My second cellar also went off without a hitch.

De-stemmed white berrries after a night soaking, ready to be pressed.

Johannes and Joachim discussing the plan for the day.

My first plunge.

But they’re white grapes!

Soak away all you tannins.

Freshly de-stemmed and crushed.

Make sure everything is in order David.

The Anton is my friend.

Everything make sense?

Hello Nino!

Bunches of fruit, obviously!

Stems, sans grapes.

Day Fourteen began quite auspiciously, as I managed to strain my back moving boxes of wine which then put me out for two days afterwards. Fortunately things still aren’t busy yet, so I wasn’t missed too much and I didn’t miss too much either. It really is a shame that every day I miss something is a day I don’t have the opportunity to learn anything. Most of the day ended up being spent correcting the markings on tanks at Nierstein, but Johannes did show me how to make the cellar run where each fermentation tank is checked for sugar, temperature and sensory analysis. At the moment it’s not too taxing as there are only a handful of tanks with fermenting wine in them. Come the middle of vintage and the cellar run will take a lot longer.

El Jefe taking me through the steps of testing a fermenting tank.

A half-day at Nierstein saw me attempting to correct the markings on tanks made by some of my predecessors. Somehow the measurements were incorrect so I have to try and calculate the volumes as best I can. It’s taking a little more mathematics than you may think. It also takes substantially more elbow grease and finger-damage trying to get the old markings off. Before this we finished pressing the rest of the silvaner picked yesterday, and also Johannes put some of it with skins into one of his favoured pressure tanks for fermentation.

After a night macerating on skins the silvaner is pressed for racking and then fermentation.

Johannes took some of the pressed juice from the previous day and left it to settle in a couple of glass balloons. This is the juice being racked, before it will go back into a balloon for fermentation. It had a certain amount of skin contact, and he is trialing this method to extract more character from a generally basic variety.

Actual harvesting today!!! Some silvaner from a few different vineyards. It gave me another opportunity to get to know some of the pickers from the P countries of Europe. The Polish come across for the six-week period of harvest, work everyday from eight until five and then head back home afterwards. Many of them have been doing it for years and know the vineyards as well as the Hasselbachs. The Portuguese all live here but head back for holidays to see the family, which I think I may have mentioned when I was there and saw all of the vehicles with license plates from various parts of Europe.

The lord of the land surveying in the early morning sun.

The view over the back of Nackenheim.

Ready for a full day of harvesting.

Nino is from the Douro, and has been here for about 30 years.

On the ninth day I rested as I was struggling to shake a cold I had for almost two weeks, and the tenth day involved scrounging for things to do as the vintage still hasn’t really got going and Johannes was in Austria. The eleventh day of vintage started with finishing the cellars at Nackenheim and checking the amphora for any leaks, and then heading over to the Nierstein cellars to get to know them better and also test some grape samples in a different laboratory.

Johannes taking me through the Nierstien laboratory.

The tanks need their numbers redone.

Hard to see, but we caught a Landrover ‘swimming’ down the Rhein River!

Day eight didn’t involve anything new in terms of work (more cellar cleaning), but I had the afternoon off which allowed me to get a haircut (not really happy with it but you can’t expect much for 15 Euros), and then I took up an invitation to the Ingelheim Rotwein (red wine) Festival. It was somewhere between an agricultural show (without the competition element) and a fair, with lot’s of wine and food with rides for all the kids just starting their holidays. Ingelheim isn’t one of the best places in the Rheinhessen region for wine, but they are known for their red wines like spatburgunder (pinot noir). Ingelheim itself is a lovely town with an old city wall running around it.

A lovely old building in Mainz.

The main square in Mainz with the cathedral in the background.

One of the gates of the old city wall of Ingelheim.

A week into vintage and there has been barely anything harvested. A lot of the fruit is just not quite ripe enough, but has promising levels of acid to ensure that when the fruit does come off it will be sensational. The fruit I was working with on my seventh day wasn’t quite up to Gunderloch scratch, as I helped Johannes and some of his school mates pick a parcel of grapes they are fermenting for a project. We kept things pretty old-school with one of us wearing a large basket on our backs for the others to dump their buckets into. Perhaps this is something I can look forward to when I am in the Mosel in a few weeks. Unfortunately for Johannes and his fellow students the de-stemming machine at the school winery packed it in and they had to be done manually, something Johannes couldn’t stick around for. In the afternoon I helped around the winery again, preparing and packing some wine.

Bright and early we harvest the fruit. That’s what makes the difference.

Get right in there and don’t miss any grapes.

Fine work from Johannes here.

Is it just me or do I look slightly confused?

Nice lens flare.

The grapes go in the bucket.

Then into the basket.

Then into the bin.

The wine pyramid at the Oppenheim Wine School

Bins of grapes waiting to be de-stemmed and pressed.

The entire vineyard team has arrived from Poland now, and I joined them today with more leaf thinning and pre-harvest fruit selection taking out any bunches with rot or drying. It is pretty hard work, mostly as I am surrounded by a combination of Portuguese and Polish, neither of which I can understand. Bit of fun!

Lunch time. Take advantage of that sun whilst it lasts!

Freshly groomed slopes.

 Day five was much of the same as we finished preparing the amphora project but regretfully I probably won’t be here when the fruit is harvested, pressed and fermented inside it. Down in the cellars I continued cleaning and preparing the cellars; an important but very wet and dirty task.

Making sure the soil is dry we left it out in the sun.

We put sand around the amphora and then surrounded it with soil.

Snug as a bug in a rug

What’s inside the magic box?