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Pictures of the Mosel wine harvest
2009
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Click here for a harvest report
 Zeltinger Sonnenuhr in autumn colours at harvest-time. |
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 The pretty village of Ürzig seen at dusk from Zeltinger Himmelreich |
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 Super-ripe Riesling grapes destined for high-quality Auslese wine. There's no botrytis in these grapes.... |
 ....but there's a lot of botrytis in this bunch. |
 She may be lovely, but she still works on steep slopes that terrify me.... |
 Many of the Mosel vineyards are very steep, and Zeltinger Schlossberg is no exception. |
 There's a lot of hard work in picking grapes on a vineyard this steep. |
 This is the old-fashioned, labour intensive way of getting the grapes to the top. |
 Put them all in this large basket on your back, and carry them up the slope.... |
 .... and when you finally get to the top, climb a little ladder.... |
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 ...lean forwards.... |
 .... and carefully tip them into the trailer. |
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 Several of the larger growers use some form of mechanisation such as this small tracked vehicle. This is Zeltinger Sonnenuhr. |
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 Alfred Gessinger uses a small trailer that's winched to the top by a cable. |
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 Then the tedious and time-consuming work of selecting the grapes with the most botrytis for beerenauslese wine begins. |
 The end result: a small amount of intensely sweet, nobly rotten grapes that will make a very fine beerenauslese. |
 QbA wine being fermented in fibreglass fermenters in a much larger winery. |
 High quality Prädikat wines being fermented in fuders (1000 litre casks) in the same winery. |
 The winemaker in his fairly sophisticated laboratory |
 Part of a high-speed bottling line, also available for rent. |
 Karl and Stefan Erbes |
 Storage tanks at the very large co-operative winery 'Moselland', in Bernkastel. |
 Just one of the Moselland bottling lines. They are said to be capable of bottling a million bottles a day. |
