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Wine Description
The Story
The ‘Tradition’ wines are related to the early 19th century – especially to the period between around 1800 and 1850. This period is marked on one side by the period of baroque, where intense aromatisation in vinfication was practice. With the upcoming Romantic aromatisation yielded the idea of pure nature and the ‘pure’ taste. Besides that winemakers were looking back to an empirical knowledge of nearly 2000 years of winemaking. On the other hand this period is marked in the middle of the century by the upcoming industrialisation which has been leading to more and more technology in the cellar and started to change the craftsmanship side of winemaking. This development leads step by step to the point, when we start to talk about modern winemaking, which focuses on the question of aromas and fruit components.
200 years ago the cellar masters of Gobelsburg had a completely different idea on wine. Wine was seen in these days much more as an individual. They compared wine with the human being and believed that as we humans have to undergo certain development, also a wine has to do so. And as we have to breathe, also a wine has to breathe in order to accomplish all that. These considerations have been leading to the common practice to rack the wine from cask to cask to let the wine breath in order to encourage the next step of his development. This was repeated several times and was called the ‘teaching’ of the wine (ger: die Schulung). Here the relation between wine and cellar master can be seen in the same way as the relation between a teacher and his pupil. The task of the cellar master was to identify the potential of the wine and according to that, ‘teach’ him up to his potential. This can be seen in contradiction to our today’s modern imagination that great wine is made in the vineyard and not in the cellar. In our todays mind we belief that the big art of making a great wine is to do ‘nothing’.
The grapes are pressed with a basket press for low sediment content, without further sedimentation the wines are fermented without temperature control in 25 hl Manhartsberg oak casks (double foudre). After the fermentation the wines are racked every 3 to 4 months to let the wine ‘breathe’ on one side, but on the other side to go off the lees. This process lasts for about two years until the wine is ready to be bottled.
Wine Information
VINTAGE 2012 - A calm, warm beginning of Spring led to an early bud break. But then a very rare natural phenomenon took place during the night hours of May 17th -18th: a frost made its way down from the north and over the wine regions in Niederösterreich; heavy damages occurred in parts of the Kamptal and Kremstal regions. Ultimately, this lead to significant harvest losses. Spring continued, however, with very quiet and sunny conditions, and the first peak temperatures - up to 38 degrees C - were reached during the last week of June.
In July, there was a cool period lasting for around ten days, and it contributed in part to a surprisingly high amount of rainfall. This phase was extremely positive because, as the weather soon turned for the better and then climaxed with a very hot and dry August, there was ample water storage in the soil for the thirsty vines. The dry conditions continued until the end of the main harvest in mid-October. This was replaced by a sudden onslaught of cold temperatures that lasted until the end of the month.,
The parameters for the white wines are similar to those of the previous year, although the ample water supply in July and noticeably cooler night temperatures in September resulted in more compact and structured white wines.