Vintage, harvest, whatever you want to call it, 2021 wine has been made. My 10th vintage, and thats hard to believe.
As always you are a little sad that it is over, proud of what you’ve done, and a tad mentally frazzled after having your focus be on one thing (and all of its moving parts) for so long. Maybe enough time has passed that I am able to talk about. 

My goal writing this article is not to teach anyone anything about wine making, just tell a little about my experiences in the cellar. As my intention with this blog is to mostly share my research and experiences wine tasting and touring to help others plan their own wine itineraries, this is my leap back into writing and the reason I have been quiet for so damn long. 

During vintage it’s not only the physical labour hours that take your time, it is everything going on in the cellar that takes up your mental headspace. Most mornings are spent thinking about where grapes/wine is moving, what free tanks you have, lab tests/results, cleaning lines, the weather, tank temperatures- I’ll just stop there. Most evenings are spent with the days physical work spinning in your head and the idea that you left tanks open, things dirty, or generally planning what needs to be done the next day. It really is a wild ride because the job requires all the mental energy you can find. You don’t have time for many personal things (and usually when you do you are sort of spaced out thinking about work you did or work you will do). I am in no way complaining, just writing my harvest reality. So with that, I am sorry if I missed your calls or texts, wasn’t there for something big in your life, or was spaced out thinking about work when I was around you. This is wine making, it is a one of a kind job and you have to take it with its good and its bad. 

What actually happened in the last 2+ months? In short, wine has been made, but what does that actually look like? From sparkling to late harvest, the grapes came in! In total we took in around 27 tons of grapes this year. That might not seem like a lot to people working in bigger cellars, but believe me with only 3 people in the cellar it is enough work (besides the whole company has to continue running so half the time you are literally alone in the cellar). Being alone and a woman in an Italian cellar is a whole different article! 

Chardonnay was picked for sparkling wine earliest with a higher acidity, and about 2 weeks later the rest of the Chardonnay was taken in for still wine. Then came the Teroldego for a base of Rosé, this year I did two versions of Rosé, one picked earlier which had no time on the skins (resulting in a softer colour and lower alcohol) and then one on the day of the big Teroldgo intake as well. Then came the experiments, and this was my year of experiments let me tell you! Taking a natural approach, i created a few “Pied de Cuve” which is crushed grapes left in the vineyard to naturally gather yeasts and the juice is inoculated with that once it is ”wildly fermenting”. Additionally using maturation (time on the skins), these natural wines are my trial at making something as low intervention and bio as possible and that I am confident in. 

The reds came in next Lagrein, and Teroldego. Oh Teroldego, what a panic you always are. Lagrein is a small vineyard where we pick everything by hand and carry it into the cellar to process it. The vineyard sits at the base of the mountains forests which causes a low yield and overall not a painful day for me in the cellar. 

And then the Teroldego. Terodego is our main varietal, native to the Piana Rotaliana where the winery is. Our plants are 30-50 years old and we use these grapes to produce 5 labels of Teroldego.

The call was made that we would start taking in Teroldego grapes on my birthday (naturally – almost every year). Just before lunch the winemaker was beginning to get paranoid about more rain sweeping the valley, this is the case almost every year when the fruit is just right but this year has been particularly finicky with rain and air flow. He turned to me and said he wanted to bring the rest of the fruit in, but that would mean emptying the 3000L tank where one of the “wines” needed to ferment. In this tank we make “Single Barrel” Teroldego which ferments in a steel tank and then spends 1 year in this large wood tank, but this is the tank where our reserve Teroldego ferments in. Putting my head down I said “let’s fucking do it” and I began emptying the tank. The day didn’t start with this idea, and I didn’t even know it then, but we would just keep going and going that day until we took in actually every single bunch of Teroldego. Usually we do this throughout 3 or 4 days. Every harvest there is always one day that every single thing seems to happen and it is a wild mess in the cellar, this year it just happened to be on the day of my birth. I racked and inoculated white wine, and took in 30 tonnes of Teroldego grapes while emptying other tanks. Again, in no way is this meant to be a complaint, just what happened. 

Of course the wine is not finished just yet, but sticky fruit is all in. The red wines are then punched down 3 times a day while fermenting for a bit more than a week. This is all done by hand and quite a fun time in the cellar with music and light headedness. Then comes the pressing, where all the fermentation vessels are emptied of their liquid and the grape skins put into boxes to bring them downstairs to the press area. Here the skins fill the press to extract the remaining liquid from them. This is one of the longest and hardest days of wine work in the whole year because it is a time consuming process filled with shovelling and moving things around, pumping and organizing. But once that is done the wines (hopefully) go into malolactic fermentation (don’t worry most of them did) which lasts about 2 weeks before they are racked again and put into barrels. 

I lay out this timeline, but of course nothing goes perfectly and it is not like wine is ok done, next, during this period you have barrels of white going into Malo, still a Chardonnay fermenting (he took forever) and oh wait – another vineyard to pick!

The late harvest vineyard grows at 700m in elevation and is the last to come in. Souvignier Gris, a resistant variety planted 5 years ago, completely natural (no treatments) was smooth sailing, pressed and racked and fermenting. 

As with every birthday, every harvest I like to reflect so here I am doing it publicly. What the hell have I learned? Being an impatient person I feel like every year I say patience but I mean take from that what you will. I’ve learned that wine/grapes want to be played with, they want to share their voice, the growing season they have had, which is different from the previous harvest. With that, as always, every year is different, you get to see the differences in this years fruit, its portions, proteins, complexities, just like you do in yourself and the people around you every year. 

How was this vintage different than last years? It was extremely fast, the weather played (kind of always does) tricks on you and both the whites and the reds came in hot and fast. Quantity was much lower this year, which is a combination of mother natures plan of a rainy growing season, and our more meticulous pruning/selection processes. This vintage was also easier it felt than some, but I am assuming that has something to do with my almost decade of training for it. This year differed in the amount of experiments I was able to do, and how much we have pivoted to the natural side of wine making. While we have always worked under “bio” laws, making small tanks of completely natural, maturated wines (in the end Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and Teroldego) has been a very nice learning opportunity. These wines are less controlled (higher anxiety) and I am really very happy with how they have turned out so far. Thank you everyone involved in the process of educating and mentoring me. 

Wine making; past paced, all encompassing, experimental, lonely, dizzying, completely satisfying. Vintage 2021 overall it was great, and I can’t believe it’s over.