The harvest is always an important time in the life of a winery, as it is literally the time when the work that has been done in the vineyard since the beginning of the year comes to fruition, and in the cellar the foundations are laid for the processes that can take years to complete, during which the ripe, flavourful grapes are transformed into full-bodied and long-lived red wines such as Kopar or Solus. So, let’s see how this year’s vintage and harvest went!
After a wet 2023, the first half of 2024 started with rain. Winter was relatively mild with no extreme cold, so the spring brought an early bud burst. To give you an indication, the onset of sap flow in the vines started 3-4 weeks earlier than the previous year. Flowering had already begun in early May, so it is not surprising that we put a lot of emphasis on canopy management and protecting the vines from fungal disease. By early June the vines were in the small berry stage and by mid-June the berries had reached the size of green peas, all combined with a heat wave and lack of rain.
Due to the intense ripening, this year’s harvest started on the 1st of August, 2-3 weeks earlier than in previous years. There were no breaks between picking the raw material for the white, rosé and light red wines, so we had a continuous and dynamic harvest. In keeping with tradition, we finished the harvest on 26 September with grapes for the full-bodied red wines.
It helped that we had fine, sunny weather throughout the harvest, with the autumn rains only arriving after the last bunches had been put into the cellar. The warm summer weather concentrated the grapes, the musts were very ripe and a serious, characterful base is now developing in the cellar.
When we asked our winemaker, Csillag Bankó, about her favourite grape of the year, she replied: “Every year a different grape is my favourite. This year my favourite is Cabernet Sauvignon. We harvested beautiful grapes at full ripeness and the measurements showed excellent parameters. But what really tipped the scales was how delicious it was.”
All in all, we had a fast and intense season and the dynamics of the harvest reflected this. The quality and quantity of the harvest were in line with our expectations. The 2024 vintage will certainly offer wine lovers beautiful, full-bodied wines.
