Tag Archives: Gunderloch

Vintage 2012 – Preparations

My first week working at Weingut Gunderloch in the Rheinhessen was pretty quiet as the winery finished a few loose ends before the vintage really starts, and also makes necessary preparations. I had an induction of sorts and also had the chance to settle into my digs for my time here. Some bottlings here and a day doing some leaf thinning say out the week for me. Here are some photos from the first week.

Fritz Hasselbach showing me the condition of the Rothenberg vineyard

Rielsing bunches in the Rothenberg vineyard
Healthy riesling berries
2010 Rothenberg Trockenbeerenauslese needed to be decanted to be re-stabilised and re-bottled
Fruit sample ready for analysis in the laboratory
Freshly squished grapes, the juice about to be analysed
In the higher parts of the Rothenberg vineyard I was thinning leaves on the northern side to expose the grapes to the morning sun so that they wouldn’t suffer from heat exhaustion, and also open up the canopy to reduce humidity and potential rotting of the fruit
Considering that rot means red, you can see why this vineyard is called Rothenberg (berg meaning hill/mountain)

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The next phase

Almost a year has passed since I departed Australia for my huge journey discovering the world of wine, and I have been fortunate enough to experience a great many things. Apart from learning about some of the world’s greatest wine regions and the many wines and winemakers, I have also had the chance to visit some amazing cities and areas across three continents. The past seven weeks I have taken a break from the wine related travel and enjoyed being a fairly typical Australian backpacker. I spent about five weeks in the United Kingdom and Ireland; visiting breweries, historic cities, bars, lochs, distilleries, cliffs and of course, more bars. It was pretty tough work, don’t get me wrong, but it was also a nice opportunity to meet more people and be a tourist.

The two towers

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Due south (Rheinhessen, Germany)

As mentioned in a previous post, the Rhineland-Pfalz region has a lot of regions that are all a stones throw away from each other. This means that even though I had already been through the Rheinhessen region on my way to the Rheingau, it isn’t difficult to backtrack a little. Thus I was able to visit a few wineries here after all, who were kind enough to make some time for me at such short notice. The Rheinhessen is the largest viticultural area in Germany, stretching from the Nahe in the west to the Rhine in the east, from Worms in the south to Bingen in the north. In an area of roughly 26,000 hectares of land, you are undoubtedly going to get some variation in soil type, exposition and climate. Thus I was glad to visit two wineries at each end of the region, to see if the difference was discernible.

Vineyard in the Northern Rheinhessen

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