Wine News Mon 17 Sept 2012

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Austria Production Drop after Devastating Weather Conditions 

Thank to  Darrel Josseph in Vienna for the informations                                                                                                     

Monday 17 September Comments

Recently Austria has suffered devastating and catastrophic weather conditions, this is not good for harvest.Austria winemakers are predicting a vintage with excellent ripeness but with volume down by nearly a quarter, as a result of important damage.

In May and July there were severe hailstorms which caused €22m in vineyard damages across the country, according to Osterreichische Hagelversicherung (Austrian Hail Insurance).

Kamptal and Weinviertel were among the regions that suffered the most, they were hit  by the frosts, and the hail-pummeled Steiermark, Burgenland andThermenregion, luckily things have been compensated by a long, hot and generally sunny summer.

This, as in other parts of Europe, saw temperatures often hovering between 30º –35ºC and means harvest has been up to two weeks earlier than usual.

The president of the Austrian Winegrowers' Association Josef Pleil, said nearly 10,000ha of vineyards were affected by the bad weather, with 4000 of them ‘a total loss’.

‘So we expect a total volume of around 2.2m hectoliters this year, down from 2.9m last year. Still, with the ongoing pleasant conditions, grapes in the undamaged vineyards are showing beautiful ripeness and sugar.’

‘If nothing severe happens in the coming weeks, then it will be a warm, very mature vintage, perhaps in the direction of 2003,’ Michael Moosbrugger, who runs Schloss Gobelsburg in the Kamptal said.

Michael Malat stated: ‘This vintage will be somewhere between 2010, which had higher acidity and lower alcohol, and 2011, which tended toward lower acidity and higher alcohol.’Also according to statistics and the Austria Statistik office it likely that harevest will produce 37% fewer grapes than last year.

Austria's most renowned Grüner Veltliner and Riesling region 'TheWachau'is expecting just a 12% quantity drop, while theWeinviertel, which accounts for just over 40% of the country's entire production of Grüner Veltliner, faces an estimated 43% drop