These new wines are a result of that. It has been a process of several years of experimentation to finesse the style. Single barrel (500L) bottlings, they are pushing the envelope a little, allowing me to try new things. They’ve been floating around on the market since the end of last year, but regardless I thought it was time to introduce them to you guys.

– ‘Zero zero’ Zweigelt made without any additions at all, including sulphur.

– 100% Whole bunch Pinot Noir made from a 500 vine parcel of massale selection vines from Burgundy planted in 2017.

– 100% Whole bunch Syrah. Spicy!

All are from the outstanding 2022 vintage.

Get them while you can!

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The whole range (photo: @365wine)

For those who were paying attention you may have noticed some new labels pop up a good year or so ago. You guys know we love to change the labels up a lot so that aspect probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but we went colourful this time. We hope you guys like them.

2018 WHITE, 60% Chardonnay and 40% Sivi Pinot

2021 AMBER, 75% Sivi Pinot and 25% Laski Rizling (photo: @murukutum)

2019 NOIR, 100% Pinot Noir (photo: @365wine)

2021 RED, 50% Zweigelt, 45% Modra Frankinja, 5% Syrah

Art by Sam Vanallemeersch https://www.sovchoz.be/wine-labels

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31st March

11th April

A really warm March and early April led to an earlier than normal budburst. This was swiftly followed by a cold snap in the middle of April, slowing the growth right down. Allowing bambi ample opportunity to snack on the young shoots, particularily on the edges of the vineyard near the forest.

Bambi ate well

Our region was affected by a rather heavy frost mid-April, fortunately we had a lucky escape here in Ritoznoj, with only a small amount of damage to a few vines lower down the hill. Just goes to show what an awesome location Ritoznoj actually is!

Light frost damage to a Zweigelt shoot, 26th April

It was a wet flowering, and in general a wet beginning of the season, which meant we had to be vigilant as there was higher disease pressure than normal. We were agressive in shoot thinning early in the cycle which helped a lot in that regard. A hot summer followed.

5th May

23rd May

There were massive hail storms around Slovenska Bistrica at the beginning of July, once again, somehow Ritoznoj got lucky, with almost no damage to our vineyards.

13th July. Just 500m from our vineyards, fortunately it mostly missed us

Crop levels were perfect, the early season frost, wet flowering and agressive shoot thinning resulting in a lower than normal crop level, meaning I could skip crop thinning on almost all blocks, as it was naturally cropping right where I wanted it.

Harvest was ridiculously early, the earliest in my time here in Slovenia. We started with Pinot Noir on the 5^th of September. That’s two weeks earlier than what I would consider normal for our vineyards. But what is normal anymore? Climate change is throwing more and more extreme weather events our way, and that’s on top of generally warmer winters and wetter summers, making the business of farming in this small slice of the world harder and harder.

It was over in a flash. With the exception of Syrah, harvest was done by the 11^th of September. The cellar was cramped by the end, with everything essentially coming in at once. The grapes were in very good condition, with good sugar levels and solid acidity, though pH levels in Pinot noir were a little bit higher than I would have liked. Otherwise, I was very happy.

Syrah came off on the 23^rd of September. Looking beautiful. Maybe the best this vineyard has ever looked, I have big expectations for this wine, as always though, time will tell. 100% whole bunches as we normally do. Spicy! All the wines were pressed off and tucked away in barrel by early October.

Leaving plenty of time for a holiday in Thailand. Sometimes this winemaking gig really is a hard life.

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Because I am slack as with writing this blog, there are no posts from last years harvest. Now that the 2019 wines are mostly finished malolactic fermentation, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back and assess the vintage. It was the 10th harvest for Heaps Good Wine Co. It all started in 2010 with 11 barrels (around 3000 bottles), and in 2019 we did close to 50,000 bottles worth. It was also the 25th harvest for me personnally since I stumbled into the industry way back in 2001. And to mark those two milestones we were blessed with a pretty good year.

The season wasnt textbook, but the disease pressure, while higher than we would like was a walk in the park compared to 2018. Crop levels were naturally pushing high, so we had to be aggresive in our canopy management in order to keep them under control. We had 1,5 hectares of new vineyard come into production, and the excitement of what that parcel will one day be able to produce continues to grow.

Sivi and Modri Pinot for sparkling

Hail damage on Modri Pinot

Things were tracking beautifully until 26th August, then we got hit by a hail storm in our Oplotnica vineyard. That kicked us into action, we harvested on the 28th, picking up all the damaged fruit of Sivi and Modri Pinot and leaving the healthy grapes to hang. The damaged grapes we pressed for Sparkling base, so we will have to wait and see how that goes, lets just say it has lively acidity.

It was by far the biggest harvest we have ever done, and there was a recurring theme of overfilling the fermentors in a bid to maximise space. In the middle of harvest the cellar was completely full, we were storing empty tanks outside, and it was like a rubix cube, moving everything around to get to what you needed.

We made a couple more Pet Nats this year, it seems that every man and his dog made one in 2019, so maybe five vintages is enough for us and we can leave it to the rest now. But anyway, I wanted to try something different, so we made a red one from Zweigelt, its rustic and funky, and actually quite drinkable. Of course we did the rose again, like every year, this time we made it exclusively from Modra Frankinja, picking the fruit from the young vineyard specifically with Pet Nat in mind.

It was raining Pinot noir with the new vineyard coming on line, we tried to keep a reasonable crop on the young vines in order to try to retain balance in the fruit, I avoided whole bunch and kept the plunging to a minimum and was careful not to keep them on the skins too long(17-20 days). It is always difficult working with fruit from young vines, but I am quite happy with how the wines turned out. The old vineyard pinot all got a percentage of whole bunch, and with the exception of one ferment which has gone super reductive in barrel, the wines are the best looking at this stage since 2016 harvest.

Refosk?

We purchased some ‘red grapes’, that may or may not be Refosk from Prekmurje, so that was a little different, destemmed into open top fermentors and treated like we treat the pinot, the wine has turned out ok, very delicate and clean fruits, but absolute ripping acidity, time will tell on that one, might need to get control of the vineyard before taking that fruit again, it could of done with being cropped a bit lower.

The last thing to come in on October 14th was some more ‘red grapes’, that may or may not be Syrah, there had been some bitching going around that I was avoiding cleaning the destemmer during the harvest, so I promised to clean it after the Syrah. No problem, chucked it in 100% whole bunch.

The wines are looking pretty good, and overall the quality was really nice, so keep an eye out for the 2019s a few years from now. Cheers

The post A look back at Vintage 2019 appeared first on Heaps Good Wine Company.

Modra Frankinja shoots

Long time since I was on here, as usual I seem to neglect this blog, and as usual I promise to try harder. Anyway, the weather has been really nice so far this year, and the vineyard is off to a great start. It would of been nice to have had a proper winter, but it is what it is. Budburst has been fairly even and things are looking good so far. We will likely start shoot thinning this coming week. Hoping that the warm dry weather continues through the season, one can dream.

Young vine Modra Frankinja

Meanwhile in the wine cellar, with the mild winter and warm early spring temperatures most of the 2019 wines are already nearing the completion of malolactic fermentation. The wines are showing really good potential, and I am excited to see how they end up come August/September.

Zweigelt

I will be back on here in the coming days with a look back at last years harvest, and try to give you all an insight into all the crazy stuff we got up to. In the meantime, stay safe and enjoy a glass or two of Heaps Good wine.

Cheers

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Well, the season 2017 was tracking superbly, that is until July 7 when a huge hailstorm hit Ritoznoj, huge in terms of the time it lasted and the damage it did. Though the hail itself was rather small, the destruction was immense.

We tried our best to save what we could, spending two weeks meticulously going through the vineyard and removing the damaged berries from the bunches. The result was that we managed to salvage around 20% of a normal harvest. Thankfully our vineyards in Oplotnica remained in great health, so all was not lost.

The wines from 2017 are currently resting in barrel, though soon we will be racking them in preparation for bottling, it was a challenging year but I am still quite happy with the overall quality of the wines, with the exception of the Modra Frankinja which we will probably not bottle, but given we have only one barrel it is not the end of the world.

That brings us round to 2018, another crazy year, the new normal is that there is no normal, I guess. The vines burst very early in spring, and the weather through the season was one of two things, hot or wet. This meant a lot of disease pressure on the vineyards, particularly from peronospora(downy mildew), it seemed like a never ending battle, in the end we survived ok, and the vineyards were in reasonable health heading into the harvest.

Harvest 2018 started on the 29th of August, stupidly early, we already have the Pinot noir from Oplotnica and the Zweigelt from Ritoznoj in the cellar, in general it is looking good, and it’s an exciting time of year to start seeing some results from the season’s worth of work. Anyway, we need to get back to it…

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Modra Frankinja, 31st March

This has created a hectic few weeks, with a push to finish up the pruning in a shorter time frame than usual. Just to add to the stress levels we planted an additional 1,5 ha, a mix of Modri Pinot and Modra Frankinja. Which has meant a hell of a lot of extra work for this time of the year.

Now that everything is done it is time for the cellar, and to turn my attention to selling some wine to help pay all the bills from this new vineyard!!!

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So, in the end the weather was kind to us, and the vintage ran smoothly. We expanded into a second cellar, where a good chunk of the whites were made this year. Whites have strong acidity, with good ripeness levels. At this early stage, Sivi pinot is looking similar to the 2011, with a tad more definition given the higher acidity.

Chardonnays are funky, austere, and tightly wound, that is, the barrels that are finished ferment, there are still 4 or 5 barrels that have gone into hibernation mid fermentation, given the low cellar temperature, they won’t start ticking along again until spring next year.

Pinot noir was again early, with potential alcohol at picking between 12 and 12,5%. Great flavour, and reasonable acidity levels, make things much easier in the cellar. All the pinot noir ferments saw at least 10% and up to 25% whole bunch. Maceration times were between 18 and 21 days.

Blaufrankish was a bit later, as the weather cooled off at the end of september, start of october. When we did finally pick, the grapes came in at 6 degrees celsius, which normally would be fantastic, but given the weather and thus the cellar stayed cold, it took 14 days for them to warm up sufficiently that they could start fermenting. All the reds are now safely tucked away in barrel, awaiting the warmer temperatures of spring to start MLF.

Overall 2016 looks like being a good year for us, how good exactly we will have to wait and see as the wines develop.

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Pinot Noir, Ritoznoj

The vines have been getting plenty of water and with the hot days are growing like crazy, it is hard to keep up. The poor weather, especially periods of cold during flowering has caused some problems and fruit set is not perfect. Some bunches are untouched, some have a small percentage of missing berries, and then some bunches are completely ruined. This is not the end of the world for us as we usually reduce the crop anyway, just this year nature is doing some of the work for us.

Not the most focussed of photos (stupid phone). But evidence of problem weather during flowering

Last night saw some hardcore storms, with very heavy rainfall. Hail, and reports of 50mm of rain falling in one and a half hours in the region. We escaped the hail, no damage to report in our vineyards. Though the cellar was flooded, and sunday morning was spent cleaning the winery’s drain (yes, I did smell good after) and evacuating the water, the romance of winemaking.

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We met some really cool people, and had a blast. Made some good contacts, and created a bit of interest in the wines. Things look good with regard to opening up a couple of new export markets, but of course we will have to wait and see, no deal is really done until the money is in the bank.

A combination of overdoing it on the first two days, and feeling happy with the contacts we made saw us bailing early on day three, though in true heaps good style, we still gave the people the opportunity to get what they want…

Which brings us back to Slovenia (never thought i’d be feeling good to be coming ‘home’ to Slovenia) and the beautiful peace and tranquility of the vineyard. Flowering is just starting to kick off in the Pinot noir and Chardonnay and the bees are out…

What a wonderful time of the year. Cheers.

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