Freyburg (dpa/sa) - The first grapes of the year have been harvested in the Saale-Unstrut wine-growing region. About 4,000 kilograms of the Solaris grape variety were taken from the vines, said Franziska Zobel, chief vine warden of the Freyburg-Unstrut winegrowers' association, on Tuesday. The must is the raw material for the Federweißer - a milky, cloudy drink with little alcohol. There will be a tasting on Friday.
For the winegrowers in the Saale-Unstrut region, the Federweiße harvest is the dress rehearsal before the actual start of the harvest. That should start in the next few weeks. Early varieties such as Müller-Thurgau and Bacchus are then harvested first.
The grapes for a variety of white, red and rosé wines are now grown on an area of around 800 hectares in the more than 1000-year-old quality wine-growing region. The region with the terraced vineyards, which extend mainly in the south of Saxony-Anhalt to Thuringia, is considered one of the smallest and at the same time northernmost growing areas in Germany. According to the German Wine Institute, more than 100 grape varieties are grown on around 103,000 hectares nationwide.
