And it’s almost finished?

Almost a month has passed since my last article and that just goes to show how busy the life of a wine maker is during harvest. Looking back on the past month, it was pretty intense. As I already mentioned, my colleague Béla and I set up camp on the grounds of the winery so we could save the time we spent getting to and from work. Instead, at the end of the day, we sat back and enjoyed a few rosé spritzers (I rather not disclose exactly how much our employee consumption was this month…) slapped some meat on the grill and quickly went to sleep for the few precious hours we had left before we would pick up where we left off not that long ago...

We began with the whites at the beginning of September and then continued with the grapes for our rosé. We were really lucky with the weather because grape ripening didn’t stop for one second. Warm days, cool nights meant we had to shift into high gear so that all the grapes would be processed in time and the sugar levels woulnd’t get too high. The ripeness was just perfect and as harvest is almost completely finished, I can now proudly say 2009 will be a great year. At least that’s the case with us (Malatinszky Kúria). The reason for that little addendum is that I heard a few wineries complain about the harvest this year. For us, all we have left is the Cabernet Sauvignon and already some of those berries have been processed. It looks like that come November, harvest will be a distant memory. Most our wine has already fermented and have begun to show great aromas. Don’t forget to keep your eye out for the Sauvignon Blanc! It is our first harvest of this variety and I think it turned out excellent. The rosé is also one of our best with intense, long-lasting aromas. But oh, the Cabernet Franc! I have practically fallen in love with tank number nine. Already in the must you could detect its unique aromas that make it somehow different, better than the rest. Now that its practically fully fermented, I can sense beautiful tropical spices as I sit on top of the tank pumping over the juice. The cocoa, nutmeg, and cinnamon spices are incredibly good! And now we “only” need to wait four to five more years to taste this wine in its best form. For those who have not yet harvested their grapes, they are going to be in a bit of a predicament as the cold, clammy weather has arrived and if it stays, then the berries that are still on the vine are pretty much done for. And another thing to worry about: the starlings. They are in here outrageously large numbers. Large black clouds of them swoop down and can do great damage to the vineyards. I hope there will be a lot of good wines to come from this year and now that I have a bit more free time, I can hardly wait to taste a few of them here and there.