Merlot Auslese 2021

Vintage 2021

Our Merlot Auslese comes from the Ried Steinhäufel. We only brought the grapes in on 21 October 2021, well after the window set for Austria's main harvest: late September to early October. At 22 °KMW they were duly ripe. The wine is sweet: 42,9 grams of residual sugar per litre are set against 6,2 grams of acidity.

There isn't much of it, the whole batch is 600 litres. At competitions the Merlot Auslese 2021 collected gold at the Lower Austria State Wine Awards 2022 and silver at AWC Vienna 2022.

Ried Steinhäufel

The grapes for Merlot Auslese 2021 grow in the Ried Steinhäufel vineyard in Teesdorf, on pure gravel that holds hardly any water and naturally has little humus. Its rows are green all year, sown with clover, phacelia and buckwheat instead of grass. We use no herbicides.

View the vineyard site on riedenkarten.at

How we care for the soil

The 2021 harvest

The must for Merlot Auslese 2021 measured 22 °KMW: the Klosterneuburg must scale shows how much sugar is in the grape juice, one degree being roughly one per cent.

Awards

What the figures say

Merlot Auslese 2021 has 12.4 % vol. alcohol, 42.9 g/l residual sugar and 6.2 g/l acidity. It is made in a medium sweet style, which under wine law means more residual sugar than medium dry, but no more than 45 g/l.

The sugar-free extract of Merlot Auslese 2021 is 26.2 g/l: everything dissolved in the wine apart from water, alcohol and sugar, such as minerals, acids and tannins. In the laboratory, it showed 64 mg/l free and 136 mg/l total sulphur. Per 100 ml, it has 372 kJ or 89 kcal. It received the official inspection number N 14349/22 after being analysed in the laboratory and tasted by an official panel.