November 12th
”The harvest is now completely finished and we are working full time in the winery. I am happy with the quality but not the quantity. This is the smallest harvest since 1985! Today we are racking the young wines. This means that we are moving the wine from it lees to a new tank. The heavy sediment is falling to the bottom of the tank and we can transfer the clean, clea
r wine from one tank to another without filtering. Our top wines are still fermenting in the tanks and barrels and it looks good. It is also high season for bottling of the wines from last vintage. In the vineyard we are making a rough pruning with the tractor to take away the longest shoots from the vines. Later on, with start in December and finishing in February, we will cut back the vines by hand. This is one of the most important things we do with the vines. If we didn’t prune them hard there would be too many grape bunches which would of course give us more wine, but of lower quality and more deluted.”
Franz Leth
October 15th
”We are right now in the middle of the harvest. In August it rained and rained, September was a bit better and October has started off very good. We have about 23 of the grapes still on the vines and estimates that they all will be picked at the end of October – beginning of November. The quality is really fine, but the yield is very low this year. I haven’t got so few bunches since 1997!
I was very happ
y to hear from my importer that we will launch Leth Rosé at Systembolaget in April 2011, and we are right now discussing the design of the label and the bottle shape. It makes me very glad that both the Swedish consumers and the monopoly buyers like my wines."
Franz Leth
June 1st
“What a terrible weather we have had this last week! I was talking to my importer in Sweden complaining about the rain. Every day we have 15-20 mm rain and up to three thunderstorms! In the vineyards the work is going on as always. The shoots are growing and have reached a length of about 20-25 cm. We are making a crop thinning where we cut off the shoots we don’t want. All remaining shoots are now attached in the wire system, which is a very time consuming task, especially when you from time to time have to shelter from the heavy showers! We are between 6 and 12 people in the vineyards to manage this back-breaking work.
In the winery not much happens right now. Some bottling of course, but apart from that the older wines is having some peace and quiet now. This time of the year is much about selling wine and pray for good weather and healthy conditions for the grapes!”
Franz Leth
April 13th
”It has been raining cats and dogs the last week, so the bud break hasn’t occurred yet which is quite fine since there still is a risk for spring frost. We are continuing the hard work in the vineyard to clean up after pruning and training of the vines. This is very tough with all the mud! You should see my boots!
We are also ploughing away the soil that has covered the base of the vines during winter, to protect them from the cold. We are since fifteen years working sustainable, which is very close to organic farming, and of this reason we have some regulations to follow. For instance, we are not allowed to start treating the soil by ploughing down the green growth between the rows until May 1st. Normally we plough down every second row for giving the soil nutrition.
I think that the biggest – and maybe only – difference to organic growing is that we are allowed to use chemical treatments against mildew. If we look back into vineyard farming 20 years ago, the normal way was to spray every ten day, whether it was necessary or not. Nowadays the spraying is kept to a minimum. We would love to work 100% organic, but the risk is too big. We cannot afford to lose our harvest because of deceases in the vineyard…”
Franz Leth
March 8th 2010
“Even though the winter starts to come to its end (Yes the temperature is not -23 anymore, but still snow in the vineyards), we still have a lot of work to do in the vineyards before spring. The most time consuming work is the pruning. Each and every vine must be cut back, otherwise the vine would use too much energy to the branches and leaves. We don’t want to have more than a certain number of bunches on each vine. If we get too many grapes they will not be concentrated enough, and the wine will be diluted and watery.
On the picture you can see that we are keeping only one cane on each vine. When we have cut of all wood that we don’t want to keep, every vine must be tied up on a wire to support the heavy grape bunches. All this work is made by hand, there are no machines that manage to do it. In summertime we use the dry wood when we barbecue, which gives the meat a special flavour.In the winery we are at the moment bottling all the young wines, as well as previous years wine that have been matured in oak or tank.
Some of our wines are made for immediate consumption, while other benefits from some maturation. We will soon start to bottle the rosé wine of vintage 2009 for the Swedish market, which will be released at Systembolaget in May. The name is “Leth’s Have Pink”, isn’t that funny?”
Franz Leth
January 28, 2010
We are having a very hectic period right now in both the winery and the vineyard. A lot of wines have to be blended and moved around. Franz Jr is doing most of the work in the vinery, and he is very busy this time of the year. Same goes for me. I don’t lie if I say that someone is calling every hour to ask for wines to buy, or just to know when the vintage will be ready.
Today is our biggest concern the weather though. We had -23C in the vineyard tonight which is a critical temperature. There is a big risk that the vines have been damaged by the frost. Down to 17-18 is usually no problem, but below that… Some grape varieties are more sensitive than other, like the blue zweigelt, but we can only wait and see. We will have the answer in springtime. It has been a very cold winter, like you have had in Sweden too. The ground has been covered in snow for 2-3 weeks now and the temperature has been very low. This makes the work with the pruning very tough. We prune the wines from beginning of December to end of February/beginning of March. This is done every year to keep the number of bunches down, to get good concentration in the must. Lots of grapes from every vine gives very diluted wines, and that is not our philosophy.
During the harvest, in the beginning of October, we had 26-27C. I have never ever experienced such a warm harvest. (it is hard to believe when I look out and see the rime on the trees! 50C difference between summer and winter!) The hot weather during harvest led to the fact that this vintage’s wines are a little bit softer and with a lower acidity than last year. This is what I think is so wonderful with working with wine; you can never know from year to year what to expect!
Franz Leth
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