The 2022 harvest started today at the St.Andrea Vineyard. György Lőrincz Jr. the wine maker told us what to expect and which grapes they started this year with.
What can be known about this year’s harvest?
We are preparing for a breathtaking harvest, and then God will decide what it will be like. This year is a difficult vintage, in the last 100 years there has not been such a drought, neither on our plantations nor in the country. We were also a little nervous, because there were areas where the survival of the vines was at stake. However, I think that the recent wetter days have refreshed the plantations a bit, so that only one exposed, stony area “suffers” from the drought.
What effect does a drought of this magnitude have on the grapes?
In all aspects of life, water is vital, and this is also the case with grapes. A sufficient amount of precipitation is essential for the plant’s basic life processes to start shoot growth, fruit set, and fruit ripening. There has been a drought since the end of May, and even in the winters of recent years there was not much rain and snow, so this naturally affected the plantations as well. There are fewer berries, smaller grapes, thicker skins, looser bunches and less juice. For this reason, we approached this year’s grape growing with a completely different mind set. We took a serious look at where and how many bunches to leave, so that there would be an ideal amount of fruit for the harvest.
We are obviously optimistic, the rain will not help the situation now, in fact it will only crack these thick-skinned berries… And this is where gray rot comes from. So this year we start the harvest early and start picking the Chardonnay on August 25.
Which wine does chardonnay go into?
Into our Mária wine. On Monday, I brought a sample of the grapes, which we pressed and checked the parameters. Sugar, PH, density and the expected alcohol content can be calculated from this. By the way, the grapes are very tasty, I was a little afraid that they wouldn’t be as acidic in this heat, but they taste great this way, for the first time. I hope the parameters will prove us, we are very optimistic!
György Lőrincz Jr. regularly reports on this year’s harvest! Follow us for the latest news on our Facebook and Instagram pages!