Cuvée vom Berg 2014

Site & soil

Due to erosion over the course of many decades, lower-lying areas in each vineyard have thicker layers of soil than the rest.  In very dry years, the lower part has better water nutrition and therefore the grapes mature more evenly and fully than in the significantly more meagre places higher up. In years with a wet autumn, grapes in these lower parts ripen later and quite differently from the rest.

Every year, we separate the grapes from the lower parcels of each vineyard and blend them together. We call this wine Cuvée vom Berg, as it is really a blend made from almost all vineyards and varieties, although with a prominent proportion of Syrah and Blaufränkisch.

Harvest & vinification

As with all our wines, we don’t use sulphur on the grapes, we ferment with wild yeasts and we macerate very softly in large wooden fermenters without using any mechanical tools. Grapes and must are neither heated nor cooled. During the wine’s two years of maturation, we make only one soutirage – for the rest of the time, the wine just matures slowly.

The result is an impressive wine, very seductive with fruit, finesse and tempting acidity. It is a wine that sommeliers love to serve by the glass, as it evolves and improves the longer the bottle is open.

Vintage 2014

2014 saw an exceptionally difficult end to the vegetation cycle. Rain began in mid-August, sometimes in massive volume, and soggy conditions persisted for several weeks. Berries and stems of the already ripening clusters were threatened by a great risk of rot, which is why many winegrowers tended to harvest as early as possible. But we went the other way and waited for perfect maturity, with the disadvantage that we found many clusters unusable. Ultimately, the total yield this year was barely 40% of an average harvest.