2018 Carnuntum Magnum

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.

We use those grapes for our regional wine “Carnuntum”, which is a blend of 65% Blaufränkisch and 35% Syrah.

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 2018

2018 was a year of extremes: very fast flowering, then a cooler period with some rains until end of June. Followed by a very dry and very hot summer. We had to cut off grapes from young vines to prevent them from dying. The old vines with their deep roots, though, were less impressed by the heat. Begin of september, just before harvest, we had big rains which caused some problems in flat vineyards. But on the stony and dry vineyards on the higher Spitzerberg, those rains even were beneficial, as they reduced the stress and helped to soften the tannins.

The result is a beautiful complex and dense wine which is at the same time refreshing, cheerful and light-footed. An ideal expression of limestone terroir.