Neusiedlersee DAC winemakers are famous for transforming the mere essence of their vineyards into the finest wines. However, this is by no means only about the vines laden with grapes in late summer or early autumn. For right now, in winter, the proverbial wheat is already being separated from the chaff in the vineyard.

With the support of the federal government, the province and the European Union.

The last grapes have been harvested. Even those left hanging for Ice Wine have now been brought in and pressed by the Neusiedlersee DAC winemakers after the first night of frost. One might think that winter peace has long since settled in the vineyards around Lake Neusiedl. But appearances are deceptive. While the wines of the recently processed vintage are slowly maturing in the cellars, the winemakers of the Neusiedlersee DAC origin region are already busy with the next vintage.

For it is precisely in those months when nature sleeps that winemakers must go to work with both vigilance and mindfulness. Keyword: pruning. Between January and March, there is a flurry of highly concentrated activity in the vineyards to ensure that every vine can sprout vigorously again in spring. However, in order to correctly use the pruning tools—which are always guided by hand and usually battery-powered—fundamental decisions must be made beforehand. These are decisions that cannot be reversed later, but which already leave their mark on the following year’s wine.

A Matter of the Future – Already in Winter

The focus is primarily on questions such as: How high should the yield of this vineyard be next year? Will I use the grapes for a cuvée, a single-varietal wine, for grape juice, or a Reserve? What quality level should the grapes reach by the autumn harvest? Put simply: the more shoots that are pruned, the higher the quality of the individual grapes will be. You can imagine it like this: if you pour from a watering can with many small holes, the amount of water is distributed over many small points. If you remove the rose, the maximum amount of water reaches one spot. It is very similar with the strength of the vine: the fewer grapes it has to supply, the more energy goes into the few remaining ones.

Extensive Manual Labor for a Successful Vintage

As a rule, only one shoot is kept on the vine to achieve the highest possible grape quality. Only those who focus on mass-produced goods will carry more shoots into the new wine year. However, the quality-conscious Neusiedlersee DAC winemakers have always sought the path to the best grape. That is precisely why every single vine is so important to them. This means that every cut is made deliberately to avoid causing unnecessary damage to the plant. A severe injury to the wood can have far-reaching consequences for the vine, even causing it to die.

This is the main reason why winter pruning usually lasts for almost half the winter. After all, winemakers only allow trusted and trained individuals near the precious shoots. And there are many of them in a vineyard. A small calculation: as a rule, 5,000 vines are planted per hectare. If you assume that Neusiedlersee DAC winemakers have an average of ten hectares of vineyard area, that makes 50,000 vines that must be pruned by hand.

In addition, not every grape variety—and even within a single site, not every vine—can be pruned in exactly the same way. This requires expertise, intuition, and, above all, experience passed down through generations!

Who are Simonit and Sirch?

It was only in the 1980s that the two experts Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch recognized how important the gentle handling of noble vines is. The winemakers from Friuli developed a pruning method based on ancient knowledge that doubled the life expectancy of a vine. Today, it is known that vines pruned according to the Simonit & Sirch method generally live to be at least 50 years old.

If the quality term “Old Vines” comes to mind, you are absolutely right. These groundbreaking findings by the two Italians gave the term a new and more relevant meaning. Background: the older a vine is, the deeper its roots go, and the better the grapes that ripen on it become. This, in turn—with the correct further processing in the cellar—generally leads to wines that are particularly rich in extract.

No Oxygen, Please!

But let’s return to the winter vineyard. Almost in passing, the wire frames of the vines are repaired or adapted during the cold season. Furthermore, the wood cuttings are not simply banished to the compost; they are usually shredded and redistributed in the vineyard immediately—the best and most cost-effective fertilizer, as the winemakers in the Neusiedlersee DAC region agree. In parallel, they must, of course, also keep an eye on the new vintages maturing in the wine cellar.

The wooden barrels—in which the particularly high-quality Zweigelt Neusiedlersee DAC Reserve wines mature—require special attention. They must be kept “bung-full.” Because some liquid always evaporates from wooden barrels, they must be regularly topped up with wine of equal quality, or the headspace of the barrel must be temporarily blanketed with nitrogen to keep the barrels constantly full. This prevents unwanted oxidation with the oxygen in the air. In the worst case, any wine connoisseur would later taste this as a wine fault. The wine would then be virtually worthless, and all the effort put in—from pruning to harvest—would have been in vain.

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Neusiedlersee DAC.
Unique Zweigelt. Unique sweet wines.
From the sunny side of Austria. For the delight of every palate.

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