Wine with hand and foot
Autumn is clearly upon us and it’s time to harvest the grapes for our wine. It’s time to
The grapes are harvested in the vineyard and then sent to the press. It almost sounds like a book production – Gutenberg, who comes from Mainz, is not far away and anyone who has ever spent an evening with a good wine knows that it can be as interesting as a novel.
Nature, earth and ice candy
But before the machine processing begins, we first put our hands and feet to work. First, it is read with many hands and then mashed with feet. During mashing, the skins of the grapes are torn and the solid and liquid components mix. This favors the influence of phenols on the wine. Which ultimately determine the character and taste. It should have something earthy about it. Which is made possible by this procedure.
Currently, taste preferences are moving in a direction that is associated with naturalness. Around the 2000s, wines with clear fruit aromas that were matured very cleanly in stainless steel were popular. For some, this sometimes tastes like ice candy. Earthy aromas can also be unusual, at least in the more extreme variants that can occur with “natural wine”.
Of course, there are also trends in taste with an old cultural product like wine. In 2021, Allendorf will not blindly follow every fashion; instead, it will combine suitable elements with its own ideas and circumstances in its analysis of trends. Year after year, exciting wines are created that express the interaction of man and nature in terms of taste.
Wine tastes good, but is a lot of work
Nature presents new challenges every year. This year there were high losses in red wine due to high humidity and the cherry vinegar fly. Converting to a purely organic operation is also a particular challenge. Strict guidelines have to be observed. But the work is ultimately rewarded with a unique wine. As a winegrower, steps have to be taken every season to determine what quality ends up in the glass. Whether in the cultivation and training of the grapes, i.e. the care in the vineyard, or now in the grape harvest and mashing. Very good and less good grapes are sorted again. Later, during the ageing process in the cellar, the procedure can once again determine how the wine ultimately develops.
When all this is done with great care and the necessary knowledge, the result – as at Allendorf – is a wine that really has a hand and foot. We are already looking forward to our Riesling from the Jesuitengarten, but are happy to give this year’s harvest a little more time in the cellar.
