Oh dear, I we are so delighted! We finally planted our house vineyard! We didn't choose just any grape variety, but one that doesn't exist in Austria in its pure form. We started our research for the perfect vines in the one and only place we could possibly find something: in the heart of champagne! Pinot Meunier is nothing completely new in Austria, yet there is no pure Pinot Meunier vineyard anywhere in Austria. In some really old vinyards which are planted as Gemischter Satz might contain single vines of this grape variety. Whereas in the Champagne region Pinot Meunier is one of the leading grape varieties right next to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
You might ask yourselves why we searched for such vines instead of buying local vines. Well, the answere is quite easy: we wanted to have something different - as usual ;-) We found a great partner in a beautiful village called Rilly-la-Montagne. Daniel Dumont provided us extraordinary Pinot Meunier vines and showed us around his nursery and took a lot of time to give us proper advice on what kind of grapes we should buy. Here I would like to thank Mr. Dumont for his time and his professional advice!
The grapes are already growing well, luckily we had some propper amounts of rain these last few weeks and in 3-4 years we will harvest the first Pinot Meunier from our "Clos de la maison"!