From cellar to vineyard February 2013

He was referring to the fact that a finished wine can only be as good as the components with which it is made. By the way, the more elegant expression for "blend" is "cuvée" - but they are one and the same. The great "art" lies in finding the lots, or batches of wine, that perfecly complement one another. It's quite a simple affair when one has barrels of wine that can simply be bottled as they are. With a "Doppelstück" (an oak cask of about 3,000 liters) of Rüdesheimer Berg Rottland, for example, there's no question. It will be bottled as is. It's quite another story, though, when it comes to a blend of basic wines involving 80,000 bottles of "Von Unserm" of the 2012 vintage. That's an enormous quantity for us. In fact, it's the largest quantity of this wine in the estate's entire history. Wines in a considerble number of tanks and casks have to be sampled. Although I already have an idea, I simply don't know whether they'll really all marry well.

In the next few days, the first step will be to make a preselection. Then we filter the selections, after which we conduct the tasting to decide on the blend. The most important tasting of the entire year. Nothing can go wrong here. There are no compromises. And there's only one chance...

Naturally, we'll also take this opportunity to sample the Ortsweine (village wines) and the wines from our Grosse Lagen (top vineyards). Sample, but nothing else. These wines won't be touched. They'll remain on the lees in cask as long as possible and is justifiable. Some of the wines, particularly those from the finest sites, are not quite finished. Some are a little sweet and need to continue fermenting. In spring, when we hope that it will be somewhat warmer, fermentation usually starts up again on its own. In any case, I'll report on our tastings in the next newsletter.