Tag Archives: Germany

The amphora project continued today, with some more foot stomping and then pressing the juice to rack overnight before being put into the amphora tomorrow. I also used the new markings that I worked on to measure the volume of all the tanks that have wine in them at Nierstein.

Gorgeous view, with leaves changing colour all around.

Lot’s of free run juice from the foot crushing.

Johannes is very happy that his plan is working. He is pressing the grapes for more juice.

An in situ setup in the vineyards where the amphora will live for the next few weeks as the wine ferments.

I managed to lose another day thanks to my back problems, and then worked two half days with reduced duties that wouldn’t make my back worse again. Day 20 Johannes was in Oslo for one of the most inappropriately timed tastings imaginable, right in the middle of vintage. On the following day I was doing a fair amount of observing and not a lot of working, but on Day 22 I got to do something really interesting. Stomping grapes! Riesling grapes!! Stomping grapes is what several members of my family think I’m actually doing by working vintage. I never thought I’d be doing it with white grapes though. The fruit was from one of the Rotenberg vineyards and will go into the amphora in a few days for fermentation. It made for cold and sticky legs but some amazing and hilarious photos as I hope you agree.

Johannes prepares the yeast, mixing in a little juice from the tank to be inoculated.

Johannes adds the yeasts to begin fermenting a barrel of grauburgunder.

Dancing monkey!

STOMP!

Adding some dry ice (CO2) to protect the foot-crushed grapes.

Just when I thought my back was on the mend it decided it wasn’t. It might have been exacerbated by working for two days and being on my feet, with the occasional lifting pushing or bending. By the end of my nineteenth day I was starting to get very stiff and had difficulty moving like before. Now I’m even worse and have resigned myself to see a doctor tomorrow. The few things I got to do before I called it quits for the day was draining the tank of silvaner that had started to ferment on skins, picking some riesling to be pressed and used to start wild ferments, plunge some spatburgunder and continue correcting tank markings.

Perfect time to begin harvesting.

Draining a tank the old fashioned way; gravity.

Johannes plunging the cap on a vat of schwarz riesling.

Action shot!

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.