Freude 2019

A wine that is the equivalent of a long novel. It will capture your imagination and just for a moment, allow you to delve out of this world. Freude means Joy in German, and opening a bottle of this skin contact giant always brings a big smile to our faces. Ewald infuses the skins with the juice for almost a year in some vintages, allowing the wine to take on layers upon layers of flavour.

Ewald makes two skin-fermented white wines from the Werlitsch vineyards. 'Freude' is one of them and it is macerated with whole bunches: 100% in a good year, or 50-70% in a tough year, for much longer periods (sometimes a year!)

He says,

“The goal was always to play with the tannic structure in the wines.” Initially, he began working with Georgian qvevris for these wines, and as they were raised in clay, he and his friend, Sepp Muster, had the idea of finding ceramic bottles for them. He says, “As they were made in clay, he wanted them to stay in clay. That was the idea, but we also realised that the clay bottles influence the wines in a positive way.”