Cuvée vom Berg 2015

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 soils 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 prominent proportions 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 2015

2015 was an extremely dry and hot summer. The challenge was to conserve precise fruit, refreshing acidity and the typical agile grace customarily provided by the limestone. We selected very severely, taking away every single overripe berry.