Vintage 2019

This is the third vintage in a row, that has been extremely beneficial for us. Again, it was the extreme suitable weather for vine growing, that was the root cause. Also we get better to fight rot, which lowered the risk when aiming for late harvest.

The weather

The weather was characterized by:

• A very wet and cold spring
• An moderate warm summer with dry weather but adequate rain
• A fantastic autumn with only a couple of rainfalls from middle of September to start of November

Harvest and pressing

Thanks to the ideal October weather, the harvest could be really late. We consider late harvest to be one of the most important quality factors of them all.

One disadvantage with late harvest was that we were finally the only grower in the area with grapes in the vineyards, appealing the increasingly hungry birds. We didn't notice in time, that they were crawling around inside between the nets to catch the grapes. Unfortunately, we lost some excellent riped grapes before we hired people to watch the vineyards.

• 2019-10-22, harvest of Bishop Garden and Genesis low
• 2019-10-23, pressing of above harvest,
  1st fraction to tank nr 1, 2nd fraction to tank nr 2, 3rd fraction to tank nr 3
  

• 2019-10-23, harvest of Solitude and Bishop Backyard east and west, 15 % good botrytis
• 2019-10-24, pressing of above harvest,
  1st fraction to tank nr 4, 2n fraction to tank nr 5, 3rd fraction to tank nr 3

• 2019-10-24, harvest of Genesis high and Genesis grafts east and west, no botrytis
• 2019-10-25, pressing of above harvest,
  1st fraction to tank nr 8, 2nd fraction to tank nr 9, 3rd fraction to tank nr 3

• 2019-10-25, harvest of Genesis low and not picked botrytis from entire Genesis
• 2019-10-26, pressing of above harvest,
  1st fraction to tank nr 6, 2nd fraction to tank nr 7, 3rd fraction to tank nr 3

Fermentation

Due to hard rot fighting, late harvest and sudden bird attacks, the harvest was

Breaking fermentation

As usually there is a trade-off, between keeping enough high speed to not risk fermentation to expire, and to slow down speed in order to get enough time to break the fermentation. A decline of 0,5 gram sugar per day is a good target.

When the harvest is late the acidity is soft and round, and as rule of thumb, we use to trim the residual sugar equal to the acidity in grams per liter. For the solid ground grade we can let up the sugar 1 or 2 grams above to acidity level, and for the rare peaks, aiming for more classical preferences, we can trim the sugar to 1 to 2 grams below the acidity.

Assembling the wines

Due to the Corona virus, we performed a small and quick filtration, and sent the wines by DHL to Sweden. We could in this way make two parallel assemblages, one in Sweden and one in Hungary, and after that we could unify our opinions.

• Tank nr 1, Bishop Garden & Genesis low 1st fraction
• Tank nr 27, Genesis low + Bishop Garden 2nd fraction
  (tank nr 2 and nr tank 7 mixed before fermentation)
• Tank nr 3, All vineyards3rd fraction
• Tank nr 4, Bishop Backyard + Solitude 1st fraction
• Tank nr 59, Genesis high + grafts + Bishop Backyard + Solitude2nd fraction
  (tank nr 5 and nr 9 mixed before fermentation)
• Tank nr 6, 2019 Genesis low1st fraction
• Tank nr 8, 2019 Genesis high + grafts 1st fraction

We had above 6 tanks to assemble and blend into a 2019 market offering:

• Rare peak plus, tank nr 4 and tank nr 8, called wine 48.
• Rare peak plain, tank nr 6 and tank nr 59, called wine 659.
• Mid range, tank nr 1 and nr 27, called wine 127.
• Solid ground, tank nr 3, called wine nr 3.

Bottling

The bottling was made in end of September.

Wine information

Links to information of each wine, which is the same as linked by the QR-code from the back label

• 2019 Sandahl Riesling Rare peak plus 'Birdie Num Num'
• 2019 Sandahl Riesling Rare peak plain 'Brave Birds'
• 2019 Sandahl Riesling Mid range 'Starling Village'
• 2019 Sandahl Riesling Solid ground 'Air Dive'

Label theme

The bottle label theme for the 2019 vintage is birds.

The unbelievable excellent autumn weather made us delay the harvest week after week. The grapes became better and better (over ripe somebody would call it) and the starlings refused to go to Africa while they saw these grapes. Despite heavy protection with blue nets, the birds got desperate, and begun to crawl around inside the nets, in order to prepare for the long move. The birds were eating a considerable amount of grapes before we understood what was going on, so the theme is a bit ambivalent to hungry birds.

Labels

Click on the labels to get a high resolution picture.

2019 Birdie Num Num

If you have seen the movie "The Party" with Peter Sellers, you never forget when he did feed a parrot from a bird food bowl named "Birdie Num Num" and then checked the house microphone system using this phrasing to the surprice for all present party guests.

Link for more details (leads to the same site as the link from the the QR code at the back label).

2019 Brave Birds

After a lot of work with the scarecrow, you discover to your dismay, that the birds despise your attempt to scare them away.

Link for more details (leads to the same site as the link from the the QR code at the back label).

2019 Starling Village

Starlings often flies in big swarms, and when they get tired, they just fly home to inhabit their village.

Link for more details (leads to the same site as the link from the the QR code at the back label).

2019 Air Dive

When starlings approach supersonic speed, they leave behind them a jet stream.

Link for more details (leads to the same site as the link from the the QR code at the back label).

Link to the video explaining how the air dive ended.