From vineyard to cellar April 2013

It was dark. Extremely dark. Unpleasantly dark. Supposedly, it was the darkest winter of the past sixty years. I almost believe that it might be true. While this darkness dampens the spirit, fortunately, it does not have seem to have a long-term affect on nature...yet who can say for certain? The fact is that it's high time for sun hours to kick in. Nature is yearning for sunshine. We are, too. Otherwise, it was a relatively normal winter. December and January were too mild; February, too cold. All in all, temperatures were average. Unbelievable but true: January and February were drier than normal. Yet a surplus of precipitation in December helped offset the deficit. Time and again it's fascinating to note how our long-term perception of weather phenomena varies from reality. If one were to ask me about how I perceived this winter, I'd say: "wet, icy cold, and dark." Except for the "darkness," everything else was wrong.

Our basic wines have all been bottled and we're regularly sampling our wines from specific vineyard sites. The young Schlossberg wine has started fermenting again and is slowly but surely nearing the homestretch. The patience we've devoted to this wine is now paying off. The same is true of the final batch of Rottland. Here, too, this wine is approaching a dry state. In the weeks to come, we'll be keeping an eye on things and continue tasting in order to determine just the right moment to bottle.

Outdoors, vast quantities of compost are waiting to be processed. We want to spread nearly 40 tons of organic compost per hectare (ca. 2.5 acres). In the past few years, we've already applied compost in numerous plots and the results are already visible. Ultimately, our goal is to produce our own compost, but in order to do so, we need cows...and this will take a bit longer. Hopefully, not too much longer...

Operations on Sylt are also moving forward. Our vineyard manager Birger Sparr was personally on the island for pruning and tying up the vines. Our Romanian supervisor Adrian and our apprentice Cornelius were also on hand. Particularly for Cornelius, this was doubtlessly an experience he will never forget. After all, how many people in our profession end up on a North Frisian Island to prune vines...