Dear grapelovers, Every few years, I need a new ram for my sheep breeding program. This year, a young ram named Matti joined the herd. When I first introduced Matti to the ewes, he was shy and nervous. The sheep approached curiously, sniffed at him, and circled him, while he stood frozen, unsure of what to do. After a few minutes, he relaxed a little and began sniffing the ewes himself. Everything went smoothly until he made a fateful mistake: he sniffed Loppa, a young ewe bo

Dear grapelovers, In Switzerland, the quality of a vintage is often determined by the weather in the weeks leading up to the harvest. Checking the forecast several times a day and making numerous calls and messages to coordinate the harvest workers becomes routine. Any thought of planning more than a few days in advance quickly proves futile. It's a beautiful, but also very demanding time. Every winemaker has to find their own way of coping with the stress. For me, it works t

Dear grapelovers, When you spend all day working with plants, you might start to ponder the nature of this life form. Are they merely a silent biochemical process emerging from the earth—or is there more to them? Before Galileo—or more precisely, before the scientific revolution—most people in Europe believed the earth was flat. Anyone who claimed otherwise was ridiculed. It's a similar story with plants: since we don't find a brain in them, we consider them mindless beings.

Dear lover of grapes, Ants are landscape architects par excellence. They not only build tunnels and underground structures, but also veritable skyscrapers. The ant tower in the photo above is about 40 cm high! What's curious about their towers is that they choose a specific type of grass that is very strong. They then use this grass like reinforcing steel for their structures. It grows quite tall – and my sheep don't like to eat it. So for me, it's rather a nuisance. Since an

Dear friends of good things, Our friendly dwarf sheep, that diligently care for our vineyards, do themselves occasionally need some taking care of. A few days ago - with the competent help of some friends: Ena, Emanuel and Vlad - we pruned the hooves of the little Ouessants. The sheep don't have enough access to rocks and cliffs in the vineyards and are therefore not able to wear down their steadily growing hooves by themselves. This worked perfectly - just in time for the

Dear grapelovers, For many days now it has been try and hot - very hot - in the vines. The old vines, with their deep roots, are coping just fine, but the young vines are really struggling. Even the invasive and hardy "Berufskraut" is dying due to the dryness. I and my wines, we need your support: I am looking for a few good raindancers that can help us bring some rain to the vines. The rules of the game are as follows: At the crack of dawn you dance a wild raindance on t

Dear grapelovers, As most of you will know, I neither studied eonology, farming or vine growing. It has always been important for me to occasionally look over the shoulders of my neighbors and colleagues to learn a thing or two from them. There is this one colleague that I frequently look over the shoulder of. The picture here above represents my lesson of the week. If you look closely, you will see larvae from both Fire Salamanders and Toads. If the availability of food

Dear winelovers, You may have read the latest news on the consumption of Swiss wine in Switzerland - down 16% in just 2024 alone. Since the pandemic, people's interest in healthy nutrition, in order to live longer, has grown. In principle this is of course a good thing - there are indeed many things we could do better for our bodies, minds and the nature. But in our eagerness to consume as many "good molecules" and eliminate as many "bad molecules" as possible, we may be lo

Dear grapelovers, Spring has arrived in the vineyard. The vines are slowly waking up from their winter slumber and the first delicate buds are starting to break. One after the other our little lambs see the light of day for the first time. Their soft bleats blend in with the happy choir of the birds. So far five lambs have arrived and we are waiting for two more. Moving the herd from parcel to parcel requires a lot of patience when the lambs are so young. The herd usuall

Dear lovers of good food and wine, Join us for an unusual evening, where we honor the true heroes of flavor, the microorganisms! These tiny powerhouses are the true artists behind our wines and some of the most exciting culinary creations. In an exclusive Wine & Dine event we celebrate the old craft of fermentation - in the glass and on the plate. Our wines are spontaneously fermented by the natural yeasts and microorganisms of our vineyards, a pure expression of terroir an

Dear grapelovers, Nature has its own way of creating balance - at least most of the time. In my work I try to work with nature rather than against her and that is the reason why we are implementing agroforestry. For us, this means planting a variety of trees, bushes and other plants - as well as leaving a lot of dead wood in the vines - in order to create a diverse and resistant ecosystem in the vines. But as in any good story, there are some unexpected turns and twists: T

Dear winelovers, The struggle between herbivores and the trees goes back many million years. It is much older than humanity. The trees are always striving to create landscapes of a high forest and the herbivores want to convert everything to prairie landscape for optimal pastures. This struggle does also take place in our vineyards. Our ram Ludwig seems to have the natural instinct to try to kill all the plants that he does not see as food. It is astonishing just how quic

Dear grapelovers, The last few weeks have been filled with travel abroad to various wine fairs. It is always interesting to meet up with and exchange ideas with my colleagues abroad. It helps me to track changes and trends as well as finding inspiration for new products. Currently I have the feeling like the militant "no sulfites added" movement is loosing steam. At the same time, there seem to be more and more winemakers that apply minimalist methods in the cellar. The E

Dear grapelovers, The grapes are now ripening nicely and have already gotten their final color. The sugar content of the grapes is rising and this sweetness is a magnet for various insects and animals. Now we need to protect our grapes - and that without using toxic chemicals. We will start the harvest in a few days and then the grapes need to be perfectly clean. I suspect that this year the toughest antagonist will be the Drosophila Suzukii (D. Kirschessigfliege). Many

Dear friends of a good glass, April through July is usually the toughest time in the vines. The vines and the other plants are bubbling with joy of growing, and we are running back and forth, to try to guide this growth and avoid a major chaos. This year was particularly tough because of all the rains in June. Like most of our organic colleagues, our wines have already got some Mildew infection and the yield this year will be smaller than normal. As the yield will be unus

Dear grapelovers, Due to the warm days at the start of the month, our vines have already started to show their buds. The tiny buds are now at a very vulnerable stage and cannot handle any frost. So far they have been able to withstand the cold nights, but we have a couple more coming this week and the situation could get critical. I am now fully enjoying the work outside. We had some winds high above last week that made the clouds shoot across the sky at great speed. Thi

Dear grapelovers, Little Mjallhvít (i.e. "Snowwhite") is now born. We are however still waiting for the seven dwarfs to join her. Here you can see her lying next to her mother only two hours old. This whole birthing process must be quite tiresome for both of them. Nature is now slowly waking up from its winter slumber. The trees are blooming and soon I will need to start mowing the grass. Our small sheep herd is simply not large enough to consume all the grass that grows

Dear grapelovers, We are making good progress with our winter tasks in the vineyards, and currently we are focusing on pulling the cut branches out of the vines. We use this wood as building material to create shelter for the small Mouse Weasel. The Mouse Weasel is an effective mouse hunter who helps us to keep the mouse population in the vines in balance.  The Mouse Weasel is only a little bit bigger than a mouse himself, and he needs to constantly be on the lookout that h

Dear wine enthusiasts, We will participate in a beautiful event at the restaurant Wirtschaft im Franz in Zürich this coming Tuesday night. This event is organized by Slow Food Zürich. The renowned kitchen team has put together a fantastic menu and with each course they will serve a carefully selected wine from us. There are still a couple of seats available for this event and I would love to see you there. All the best, Hoss

Dear friends of wine, It is cold out there in the vineyards now. Every once in a while a welcome ray of sun is able to bore its way through the high fog. Other times we need to make do with the warmth from the fire and the hot coffee. This cold is however something valuable to us winegrowers, because it reduces the population of various insects back to "normal size" so that their development will follow the "normal pattern" in the coming spring. We have now been accepted