Winemaking

Without our great international team, we couldn't vinify the wines of this quality. Every handgrip requires full commitment from the entire team. We all have a common goal in mind. 

With the restructuring at the beginning of the 2000s, the cornerstone for something big was laid at Halbturn Palace. Oriented towards the French premium wineries of Burgundy and Bordeaux, no expense has been spared in taking Weingut Schloss Halbturn into a new era. A large part of the comprehensive 50 hectares of the vineyards was cleared, replanted and a quality guide for vinification developed.   

We live sustainability by conviction. Recycling economy, respect for nature and resource- and nature-friendly use of operating materials guide our actions. A close-to-nature cultivation of the soil in order to ensure an intact soil life of the microorganisms has been a standard practice since the beginning. The measures were coordinated in close cooperation with university institutions and international experts. Out of respect to nature, we work in a resource-saving manner and with consideration of ecological requirements. The farm estates of Schloss Halbturn are one of the largest private organic farms in Austria and we have determined for us that a one hundred percent organic farming in viticulture is only possible to a limited extent at the quality level we aim for due to the monoculture and the climatic conditions with high rainfall and hot summers. That is why fungicides are only used extremely sparingly when needed. Every year brings with it different challenges in viticulture that we take into account. Consistent work in the vineyard reward us with vintage-style wines every year. 

Our strict quality standards continue with the harvest. Already in the vineyard, our long-standing, experienced vineyard workers make the first selection by hand in small boxes of max. 15 kg. With a maximum yield of around 3,000 liters per hectare, we also harvest far below the maximum hectare yield legally permitted for quality wine, since we are convinced that this is the only way to guarantee the exceptional quality of our wines. The selected grape material is cooled down to 4-6°C in the vineyard and thus treated like fresh fruit. There is nothing better than bringing the perfectly ripened grape material to the winery after a year of hard work and critical observation of the weather.

After the harvest, the grape material is processed gently and quickly on two sorting tables in the winery of Schloss Halbturn. After a cold maceration, the almost perfect grape material is fermented in mainly open wooden-fermenters with naturally occurring yeasts. In 2001, a Bordeaux-style cellar (Chai) was built, which houses hundreds of barriques from French oak and from French producers for the optimal maturation of the wines. In order to work out the nuances of the individual grape varieties in the best possible way, our wines are aged between eleven and eighteen months separately by grape variety and quarter in the barriques. The most valuable and precious thing that Weingut Schloss Halbturn gives its wines, is the time to mature optimally. During this time, the wines are drawn off twice in order to clarify the wine from the sediments stored on the ground and this allows us to bottle the wines mostly without filtration. The individual wines are blended as late as possible in order to find the best composition for the individual wines - the experience of our cellar master, our chief oenologist and our owner families is the basis for the assembly of the individual wines. It is fascinating to see how the wines develop over time. Although each vintage has its own typicality, there is a common thread through the portfolio.