Gennadiy Gutman: «The grape harvest in Chateau Chizay has been completed and we will please you with surprises in the new season!»

The 2021 wine-growing season is better than last year’s, confirms Gennadiy Vachylia, Chateau Chizay’s director of viticulture. Especially well-conditioned white grapes, which create such a characteristic of Transcarpathia fragrant dry wines.

“We can hardly talk about the same wonderful harvest as in 2018 and 2019, which became the best in more than a decade, but this season has given good grapes, and the harvest is definitely better than last year.

However, with most of the reds, we were waiting for a long time – because of the cold, the grapes did not ripen so quickly. Thus, in some areas of Merlot plantations, on top of the hill of Mala Gora area, which is the sunniest, harvesting was started only after 10 October.

And Cabernet Sauvignon variety was the last in harvesting list at the end of October” Gennadiy Vachylia told Ukrinform.

We started in mid-September with Chersegi (a variety of Hungarian origin, which is grown in Ukraine only by Chateau Chizay) for sparkling wine. For wines of this type, early harvest is carried out when the grapes already have a sufficient content of acids and other elements, but still low sugar content, so that the sparkling wine could become as delicate as possible.

Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat Ottonel, which has very good condition, continued the season of harvesting. Next is Rhine Riesling and Italian Riesling, a local variety of Furmint, one of the best Traminer Pink grapes in 2021, and red ones.

Gennadiy Vachylia cites several facts:

“Every day, the condition of berries of different varieties from different parts of the vineyards was checked in the laboratory of the Winery, and so decisions were made on harvesting.

The maximum amount of grapes harvested in Chateau Chizay from 1 hectare is 8 tons, from which up to 8,000 bottles of wine will be created.

But in recent years, we have artificially limited the yield – this is when the goal is to collect less grapes, but of excellent quality”.

“Some grapes have excellent characteristics. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Fran, Pinot Noir, Blaufrankisch, others: we expect great wines from them. The famous Transcarpathian grape Isabella, intended for producing juice, had a perfect look, so we will create the same product. And the first in the work of winemakers is our sparkling Carpathian Sekt.

Traminer has pleased us. This year, it has excellent sugar content: 25.4%, which allows us to create a dessert wine “Rose of the Carpathians”. We do not produce it every year, the last time it was created in 2017. This legendary wine requires at least 24% of sugar. In 2020, the sugar content of Traminer did not allow to make dessert wine, the grapes were fully used for dry and sparkling light semi-sweet wine Carpathian Sekt. And now we will have “Rose of the Carpathians” of the harvest 2021!

And additionally: at night the temperature has dropped to -2 degrees, so we can please you with our Ice Wine! We were worried that this year we would not be able to make ice wine, as it was last year, but we hope to create a unique drink of the 2021 harvest.

The harvesting season is over. And I can already say that in the new wine season we will please our connoisseurs with surprises: there will be some novelties, we are planning some special treats, but we will announce them in due time.

First of all – young wine of the 2021 harvest will be presented on 20 November at the Festival of Young Wine! I sincerely invite you to Chateau Chizay“ says Gennadiy Gutman.

Let’s open the first barrel of young wine in Chateau Chizay together! Register for the festival HERE.

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Chateau Chizay Wine Company grows 272 hectares of vineyards in Transcarpathia. This is more than a dozen varieties of grapes, European and local varieties.

The plantations are located in three massifs in the region, which are traditionally viticultural: Mala Gora area, village of Midianytsia in Berehovo region and a vineyard near the village of Zavydovo, Mukachevo district.