Wine Harvest Round Two.

Today it was the Uhudler's turn.

Funny how much easier the harvest seemed this time around. It has only been a week since we've successfully harvested all of the white grapes ( more than the year before ) and the adage of practice makes perfect holds true.

There were seven of us and somehow we all knew which grapes to snip, buckets to empty and crates to carry. Gosh, if I think back to our first time harvesting, all was blurred in a haze of mystique, even the rather easy part of cutting the bunch of grapes from the vines.

The weather gods were kind to Eisenberg. The sun was out all day, perfect harvesting conditions which most of Eisenberg's vintners took advantage of. Wine farmers do live at the mercy of the weather and every harvest successfully completed is a huge worry off their shoulders. Grapes in particular need every last ray of sunshine to ripen and often the longer they are left on the vine the better the taste down the line. But it takes strong nerves to play chicken with the weather.

I can only say that these Uhudler grapes tasted as nice as they looked. It took us about four hours to harvest all the grapes with an additional two hours to start the first leg of their transformation. De-stemming and cleaning everything thoroughly afterwards.

A divine combination of viticulture and agriculture.

The chapel of Deutsch Schützen has been there for so many centuries and given refuge and faith to wine farmers of yore.

Biggi