Looking down at row after row of Riesling, Weißburgunder, Dornfelder grapes. Perfectly planted, perfectly cut they stand, like an army of extremely well trained soldiers. Growing on one of the country’s best soils for vineyards, at the flank of the hills rolling out to the Southwest for an optimum of sun.
Not a monoculture, mind, as there are lots of shrubs, small trees, and meadows, surrounding the vineyards. A good vintner knows that the best wine needs an intact ecosystem, needs birds and insects and plants to provide for the perfect environment that no chemicals or genetic engineering could ever replace.
J. is a vintner with the best theoretical and practical education one can get. And he is one of the most successful vintners of this small town in the southwestern corner of Germany, right on the French border. He is not the type for understatement, even if he is nothing like a nouveau riche kind of guy. Short grey curls, designer stubble. Checkered shirt with short sleeves, hanging loosely over his shorts, nothing fancy. Socks in sandals, even.
While J. points out the different grapes and explains his “philosophy” of wine making, his wife serves at their vineyard's Strausswirtschaft, as the typical local mix between a wine bar and a restaurant is called. Her smile seems a little tight at times.
In the kitchen, J.’s mother reigns. She has been cooking her famous Bratwurst and Bratkartoffeln (roast potatoes) here for almost half a century. A lot of habitués come here for her cooking exclusively. The meat she serves is from pigs that are slaughtered by a butcher in her yard, right under her critical eye.
But he is the aspiring young vintner who transformed the small family vineyard into a cleverly managed business, who refined his vintner's expertise as well as his marketing after he had taken over from his father a couple of decades back.
The winery’s buildings are beautifully renovated, the heavy oak portal opens four days a week to restaurant guests and wine customers, many of them from the upscale region of Karlsruhe across the river Rhine. In J.’s huge cellar, wooden barrels stand next to stainless steel tanks, tradition and high tech mingle in these cool, quiet halls.
J. has three sons. The eldest is already studying viticulture, so the succession is assured. During the last two centuries, a lot of young people left the Palatinate, as the land, split too often among too many offspring, in many cases hardly delivered enough to provide for one family. Many of these younger siblings that couldn’t be provided for, tried to make their own way overseas, and settled in Pennsylvania or other parts of the US.
Today, many wine growers send their children to California – to study different methods and traditions of viticulture in the Napa Valley and other famous wine regions. But it is clear that J. would never consider leaving his home region for good. America? Not for him, and it is clear that he almost feels sorry for us for having to live there, as he sees it.
His pride and his interest are focused on his product, on his peers. He and maybe a handful of other outstanding vintners have brought prosperity to their village that had seen less fortunate times before. He is successful in his world, and what lies behind that world’s limits? – He couldn’t care less.
"All creatures drink joy At the breasts of nature", goes Schiller's text that Beethoven chose for his Ninth symphony, and: "Kisses gave she us, and wine"...
J. may never get as rich as some deftly calculating start-up entrepreneur who sells out to financially potent investors at a certain point. He may never become a cosmopolitan with a refined understanding of or taste for different cultures. But maybe this is a price worth paying for an imperturbable self-confidence?
Joy, beautiful spark of gods...
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