Vintage 2021

In autumn 2021 it became quite possible to travel between Hungary and Sweden. Christer Sandahl held a Riesling tasting in Restaurant Fioka in beginning of September, and participated in the harvest in late October. Most other activities in the Badacsony region was managed very successful by our site manager Zsolt Palkó and the Hungarian team around him.

The weather

To put it short - the weather 2021 was strange, see the temperatures and precipitation diagram below (click on the picture to enlarge it).

The start was a wet and cold spring, which delayed the growing season a couple of weeks compared to average. After that, a long, dry and hot summer followed, which accelerated the ripeness of the grapes. When approaching the autumn, despite the accelerating summer, our Riesling grapes were still very unripe (the grapes tasted too much like rhubarbs), because the length of the growing season had so far been too short.

At Villa Sandahl, we are very careful to harvest ripe grapes, which always lead to complications with rainfall, see the below autumn precipitation picture (click on the picture to enlarge it).

The red periods are for different reasons not appropriate for harvest. The green periods are the periods we found out to be optimal for (late and ultra) late harvest. For more details, see the paragraph below.

Harvest

There was splendid weather in early September for harvesting, if only our grapes had been mature enough (period 1 in above picture). The entire team at Villa Sandahl agree to wait.

For some recent years, we have trained the cultivation team in "rot fighting". After the nice weather (period 1), the grapes was consequently of excellent health. We chose the risk to wait out the forecasted rain, in the believe that the healthy condition of the grapes would withstand some amount of rain. After some nasty weeks (period 2 and 4), the rain was over, and we could ascertain that the grapes had just survived, with still decently healthy grapes apart from some rot in the lowest parts of our vineyards.

Maybe there were some gaps (for example period 3) to harvest during the rain, but heavy rain came back (period 4). Also it was clear, that the grapes were still not ripe enough (according to our rigorous definition of ripeness).

To be honest, after period 4 it was a bit urgent to harvest the lower parts of our vineyards, see green period 1 in above picture. The period 1 was indeed rather dramatic, for some nights the temperature went down under zero degree Celsius (also see the top figure, click to enlarge), and some amount of grapes were freeze-dried. The rain that followed (period 5), didn't damage the grapes of the higher located vineyards, so we could finish harvesting the week after (green period 2). There were no weather option to wait any longer to harvest, because the huge rain in beginning of November would definitely have killed our fruit.

With this somewhat risky harvest pattern, the result was exceptional good, we had achieved fantastic raw material for our wines, ideal for fulfilling our traditional wine style, being ripe acidity and rich body.

Grape measurements

As described above, as usual, we did not apply one finished plan for the entire harvest period, instead we regularly tasted the grapes and checked the weather forecasts, to step by step update the plan.

Measurements of grape samples (average from all vineyards) :

		2021-09-21	2021-09-29	2021-10-05	2021-10-11
	Weather period	start of period 2	End of period 2	End of period 3	End of period 4
	Potential alcohol %	12.8	10.8	13.3	12.9
	Total acidity g/l	8.0	6.5	7.8	6.8

As seen from the above table, the potential alcohol was high already in late September, but didn't grow alarmingly in October, mainly because of the plenty rainfalls. In late September the acidity was high and sharp (like rhubarbs), but was also going down and softened as could be expected. As already stated above, the acidity was still too high even as late as the 5th of October.

One can argue that much rain would dilute the concentration of the grapes that was built up during the fine weather period 1. That may be true, and good concentration do in fact balance sharp and high acidity, but far from the extent that we consider enough. Even if the rain dilutes the grapes a bit, the grapes get so much more attractive in many other aspects, because with ripening not only softness appear, but also elegance, complexity and subtleness develops.

Pressing

As we usually do, the pressing was performed with our new Scharfenberger press following a traditional Alsace process. This is, we begin to fill the press with whole clusters of well ripened grapes. The first small amount of juice running out with no pressure or very gentle pressure we declassify, and after that, the 3rd, 2nd and 1st fraction of juice emerge as we continue to heighten the pressure. After that lower the pressure to zero, we rotated the press cylinder and start over with heightening the pressure again, this cycle in total for 5 times. In challenging vintages we get more of third fractions and less of 1st fraction, and in good vintages the opposite. This vintage we had some rot, but with severe selection during picking, we had very good grapes and achieved good amounts of 1st fractions. Because of that, we had too low volumes of 2nd fractions, and had to mix some small volumes, for example in tank 3, there is a mix from two pressings, see the table below.

	Date	Tank	Vineyards
	2021-10-14		Harvest of Bishop Backyard and Solitude, no botrytis
	2021-10-15		Harvest of Genesis Grafts, no botrytis
	2021-10-15		Pressing together both of the two harvests above:
		1	- 1st fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
			- 2nd fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
	2021-10-18		Harvest of Bishop Garden and Genesis low
	2021-10-19		Pressing of above harvest:
		2	- 1st fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low
		3	- 2nd fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low
			- Above 2nd fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
	2021-10-19		Harvest of Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West
	2021-10-20		Pressing of above harvests:
		4	- 1st fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West
		5	- 2nd fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West
			Pressing of all harvests above:
			- 3rd fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
		6	- 3rd fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low
			- 3rd fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West

 

Fermentation

	Tank	Start ⁰Celsius	End ⁰Celsius	Start date	Break date	Duration days	Res. sugar gram/liter
	1	6	19	2021-10-22	2022-02-28	129	≈ 8
	2	6	11	2021-10-22	2022-01-23	93	≈ 8
	3	6	15	2021-10-22	2022-02-03	104	≈ 8.5
	4	6	14	2021-10-22	2022-02-14	115	≈ 7
	5	6	13	2021-10-22	2022-02-08	109	≈ 7
	6	6	17	2021-10-22	2022-02-15	116	≈ 7.5

 

Assembling the portfolio

	Wine	Grade	Tank	From vineyards and fractions
	1	Rare peak plus	4	1st fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West
	2	Rare peak plain	1	1st fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
	3	Mid range	3	2nd fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low
				2nd fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts
			5	2nd fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West
	4	Solid ground	2	1st fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low
			6	3rd fraction juice from Bishop Backyard, Solitude and Genesis Grafts 3rd fraction juice from Bishop Garden and Genesis low 3rd fraction juice from Genesis High and Genesis Grafts West

 

Bottling

 

Wine information

 

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