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Our Wine Grows Steep

Sometimes the best way to see how much love and passion goes into something is to realize just how difficult the object of that affection can be.

  • The freedom and the ability to work outside throughout the year drives us forward.
    Weinbau Frédéric Fourré

Sometimes the best way to see how much love and passion goes into something is to realize just how difficult the object of that affection can be. At our estate, for example, we work with very old steep vineyards bounded by dry stone walls, a setup that demands a great deal of manual care and physical exertion. Such as when it comes time for crop management: spending up to eight hours in a full-body hazmat suit, spray can strapped to your back, is naturally a lot more exhausting than simply driving a tractor through a flat stand of vines. Beyond this, the vines in our terraces are in some cases over 70 years old and are an absolute mish-mash of varieties. One of our small terraces of 200 square meters contains ten different grape varieties. This makes it tough for our family and friends to differentiate one type of grape from the other when helping us with the harvest. Then again, what would life be without its little challenges? Surely less fun. There is a certain joy in running between the vines showing our helpers the difference between Müller-Thurgau, Gutedel, Morio-Muskat etc.

And one way or the other: The freedom and the ability to work outside throughout the year drives us forward. True, the reward for that work in the vineyard only really becomes tangible once the new vintage is in the bottle and we have thrilling wines to sell and drink ourselves. It also helps motivate us to keep working these steep sites and maintaining the stone walls, as they deliver incredibly mineral, intensely flavored grapes — in addition to a living ecosystem with many different plants and animals, a paradise that thrills us as nature lovers while we work. Although while we're on the subject of animals: Frédéric is a Frenchman and there's a stubborn rumor that the snails head for cover as soon as he enters the vineyard. But that's another story.

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