The beginning of the year 2019 started with a period of „vegetative rest“. The winter was quite average, not that cold, the kind we have started to get used to within the last few years. The average temperatures in January and February oscillated around 1.7 °C. The average rainfall totaled approximately to 80 mm a month and the major part of it occurred in January. The start of the vegetative season was affected by the whims of the weather. April was sunnier, with the temperatures over 20°C and with less rainfall. During this month the vine started to burst what indicated an early start of the vegetative season just like in the year 2018. Everything was changed by the rainy (108 mm of rainfall) and significantly colder May accompanied by the feared spring frosts which slowed down the early start of the vegetative season and thus influenced the final vintage.
Therefore in May we decided to cultivate all our vineyards with the biological approach or more precisely with an approach stricter that the biological approach - by using the NDM substances and additional application of Sulfur and Copper in several times lower doses than generally recommended in the biological wine production. Despite the risk connected with the vineyard cultivation and treatment in this regime, the development of the weather was in our favor and the potential appearance of the grape diseases was kept in an appropriate shape even in the areas where the conventional methods had failed. This approach of vineyard cultivation and treatment was applied in all the 60 hectares of our vineyards and this way we managed to maintain an excellent balance of the vineyards.
The further development of the vegetative season continued with sunny and dry weather. During the months of June, July and August the rainfall totaled to 158 mm and it was distributed into short-period but intensive downpours. This type of weather continued until the end of the grape harvesting season. The total harvest in terms of quantity was lower, on the other hand the quality of the grapes, their health conditions and the balance between acids and sugar in the grapes were of top quality.
The harvest period started at the end of August 2019 with the first variety Moravian Muscat. In the second week of September we continued with the harvest of the variety Müller-Thurgau and Sauvignon Blanc. Fortunately the weather was very favorable and the hand-picked grapes came to our pressing machine in high quality, with great parameters and in excellent physiological maturity. The levels of sugar in the musts oscillated within the limits in the °NM scale meeting our expectations. Our grapes had relatively good pressing potential with excellent parameters. We were grateful for the nice balance between acids and health conditions and therefore we could have more freedom regarding the selections of the technological processes in the wine cellar.
During the grape processing and treatment we decided to replace all the animal products by vegetarian products. Therefore our wines of the vintage 2019 fall within the category “vegan wines”. After our positive experience, based on the cooperation with the Slovak technical University in Bratislava in the previous years we decided to ferment our Veltliner, from the vineyard Noviny and from the vineyard Ingle, in spontaneous regime without adding any selective yeasts. Some of our wines of the vintage 2019 such as Veltliner and Riesling of that vintage still keep maturing in big oak barrels to maximize the development of the potential of wines from this vintage.
White wines of the vintage 2019 are full of freshness, firm acidity, lower pH and expressive fruity and floral characteristics. They are harmonic and well-balanced. Dry rosé wines of this vintage such as Blaufränkisch and Cabernet Sauvignon appear to be expressive and fresh with nice acids. Our semi-sweet rosé wine, Cabernet Sauvignon is characterized by the harmony of its acids and the residual sugar. Because we were patient and waited enough for the red wine acids to go down during the harvest season we were awarded with nice red wines. We would like to pinpoint the variety Pinot Noir, every year showing greater and greater potential on the loess soil in our vineyard Suchý vrch.
Currently there are six wines of the vintage 2019 available on the market, Moravian Muscat 2019, Cabernet Sauvignon rosé 2019 (dry rosé wine), Blaufränkisch rosé 2019 (dry rosé wine), Cabernet Sauvignon rosé 2019 (semi-sweet rosé wine), Devin 2019 (semi-dry white wine) and Palava 2019 (semi-sweet white wine). We will be glad to present you some of our new wines from this vintage as soon as possible and share the quality and uniqueness of this exceptional vintage.
