2019 Ried Spitzerberg-OBERE SPITZER 1ÖTW

Site & soil

The sub-vineyard Obere Spitzer includes nearly seven hectares of vines and is situated at the extreme western part of the slope. It stretches from about 210 meters altitude up to the border of the natural reserve covered with bushes and mediterranean oak trees. It is one of the steepest parts of the slope and extremly sandy and try.

We cultivate four Blaufränkisch vineyards on the Obere Spitzer with a total surface of one hectar. The oldest vineyards dates back to 1955, the youngest was planted in 2003. The wines of Obere Spitzer always show a unique character, racy acidity and an elegant, energically vertical body.

Harvest & vinification

The grapes are harvested by hand, and any overripe berry is removed by hand. In the cellar, the grapes are lightly crushed and foot stomped and macerated – in part with the stems – in open fermentation vats. This extraction is very gentle and accomplished entirely without pumping, and fermentation begins after a few days thanks to the wild yeasts.

The spontaneous fermentation proceeds very slowly and at room temperature; the must is neither heated nor cooled. This guarantees wines that are very precise & generously aromatic. After about twenty days, the wine is pressed and then matured in 600-litre wooden casks. No new wood is utilised, in order to avoid masking the expressive fruit of the Blaufränkisch. During the approximately thirty months of maturation, the wine is racked only once and ultimately bottled without filtration.

Vintage 2019

The end of spring was cool and humid, which provided enough water to the soils for a long and very dry summer. Autumn, too, was dry and sunny, but become the weather became chilly quite early.

With all these ups and downs, in the end, the vintage brought ideal conditions for an outstanding vintage, that shows complexity, density and elegant freshness at the same time.

Together with 2017, the year 2019 is definitely the greatest year of the decade on Spitzerberg.