Vintage 2015

Weather

The hallmark for this vintage was the hot weather, but without the drought that may follow from heat. Each other week there were sufficient and sometimes abundant of rainfall. The vines (maybe except for the new planted ones) were never really stressed and was never forced to block the grapes. The result was perfectly ripen grapes in the beginning of October. The only problem with the weather during 2015 was the continues raining starting at our harvest, which made it difficult to find dry days for picking. (And of course the sun came back when the harvest were completed).

Botrytis never come alone

Already in mid September there were a lot of botrytis attacking, and it turned out beautifully, and was strong enough to not be washed away by any rain. Later on there were added some new botrytis, but not so good as the first. Even when very good botrytis has developed, there are always some rotten grapes that has not taken the noble direction, and ends up as gray rot. What is important is that the botrytis ratio must completely outshine the gray rot, to be acceptable. This vintage it surely did, see below photo.

Our harvest principles

Villa Sandahl has a policy to harvest as late as possible. In fact, we harvest only when we are forced to, which happen when:

acidity gradually dropping too low.
sugar (and thereby alcohol) gradually rising too high.
anything else rising sugar (and thereby alcohol) too much like botrytis, grapes shriveling, etc.
gray rot preserves and never transform to botrytis.
winter sets in and prevents grapes to ripen further.

Harvest in reverse order

Since prolonged rain was forecasted in the middle of October, we faced the risk of gray rot or poor botrytis, and we decided to pick. Since the risk was high that we would not get enough time to harvest all vineyards before the rain, we decided to harvest the best vineyards first. (Yes, with such strategy we didn't give our best grapes an extra chance for some more days of sunshine). The final order of harvest was:

2015-10-09 Bishop Backyard 4 400 kg
2015-10-09 Genesis high 2 525 kg
2015-10-12 Genesis low 2 875 kg
2015-10-13 Rest of Genesis 4 875 kg
2015-10-21 Bishop Garden 1 610 kg
Sum 16 285 kg As can be seen from above, we succeed to harvest everything, apart from Bishop Garden, before the heavy rain.

Pressing

This vintage was so good, that the 3rd fraction we usually sell as juice to other wineries, this time we kept ourself for making a delicious standard quality wine. The 1st and 2nd fractions we achieved as usual. Interestingly, the Bishop backyard had 15 % perfect botrytis and Genesis high almost no botrytis at all. The other vineyards had botrytis between these ends.

Fermentation

After pressing we fermented the following Riesling juice:

810 liter Bishop Backyard 1st fraction for 87 days
640 liter Bishop Backyard 2nd fraction for 92 days
560 liter Genesis high 1st fraction for 108 days
440 liter Genesis high 2nd fraction for 100 days
1790 liter Genesis 1st fraction for 121 days
960 liter Genesis 2nd fraction for 107 days
380 liter Bishop Garden 1st fraction for 60 days
580 liter Bishop Garden 2nd and 3rd fraction for 71 days
2 570 liter 3rd fractions for 107 days

We normally use cultivated yeast from Alsace, which is so gentle that it barely manage to ferment to dryness (14 % alcohol and 5 grams residual sugar at 15 ºC). This year we had some problems with wild yeast, which fermented too fast in the beginning, but was not capable to ferment to dryness in the end. With cultivated yeast we usually manage to ferment in a steady pace for the entire duration, which is crucial to obtain high quality.

Blending

Last week in April we tasted the 9 tanks and some of these were blended like below.

Standard wine:

Circa 3 500 bottles of all 3rd fractions

Premium blended wines:

Circa 2 300 bottles of all Bishop Garden and Genesis 2nd fractions

Premium vineyard wine:

Circa 2 800 bottles of Genesis high 1st and Genesis 1st fractions.

Selected vineyard wines:

Circa 750 bottles of Bishop backyard 2ndfraction.
Circa 520 bottles of Genesis high 2nd fraction.
Circa 1 000 bottles of Bishop backyard 1stfraction

In total circa 11 000 bottles which will be produced during June.

Labels

The theme for the labels is "Fragrances of 2015", which means that each of the wines has a smell that is exemplified with the label. (Click on the label to get high resolution, .pdf around 3.5 M bytes).

Bella Sunrise

The standard wine has a label "Bella Sunrise", recalling the smell from morning dew when going home from a late party.

The wine is made from the 3rd fraction juice from all vineyards, which we normally sell in mediocre vintages, but was quite excellent in 2015, with some nice botrytis. It is typically of the Sandahl house style, but a little fresher and lighter in body.