Samt&Seide, Prellenkirchen 2019

Site & soil

Grapes for the Ortswein Prellenkirchen, Samt&Seide were selectively harvested from a total of twenty separate parcels, all of which are located on the southern slope of the Spitzerberg, in the vineyards Spitzer, Roterd, Panhölzer, Holzweingärten & Kranzen. Blaufränkisch vines between fifteen & thirty-five years old supplied the grapes for this wine, in which the older plants are responsible for the Seide (silk) & the younger vines provide the Samt (velvet). What they all have in common is their precise expression of the limestone soil, the refined berry aromas & refreshing structural acidity.

Harvest & vinification

The clusters are harvested by hand, and any overripe berry is meticulously removed. In the cellar, the grapes are lightly crushed and macerated in part with the stems in open fermentation vats. This extraction is very gentle and occurs completely 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 & aromatic. A portion of the clusters are trodden by foot. After approximately twenty days, the wine is pressed and then matured in 1000-litre wooden casks and 3000-litre wooden fermentation vats. No new wood is utilised, in order to avoid masking the fine fruit of the Blaufränkisch. During the approximately twenty 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.