A living soil
The balance of the soil brings the balance of the vineyards, which brings the balance of our grapes and finally of our wines.
Living granitic soil
Here are some video (in French) about our work, following the seasons! (link)
In our opinion, the necessary basis in order to produce great terroir wines is a living soil. All our work in the vineyards is guided by this idea. Easy to understand but complex to do!
The first condition to respect life in the soil is the total absence of chemicals. Therefore we have chosen to practice organic viticulture. We are certified by Ecocert.
To guarantee a good functioning of the soils, we maintain a diverse green cover. For this reason, we let grow the wild plants in our vineyards, without mowing neither ploughing them. Then we push it down on the soil using a rolofaca (see video). With this method, we create a natural mulching which will preserve some humidity and a cool temperature in our soils during the summer season. This mulch will then decompose an enrich our soils with humus. This humus is capital for the texture and fertility of the soil, helped by the fauna.
Diversified flora in a young gewurztraminer vine on the Lanzenberg
This method, based of the natural flora and fauna, also has the advantage of avoiding the use of tractor : we save gas and avoid soil compaction! For this reason we also do a lot of hand hoeing, we harvest manually etc.
A good healthy soil is sufficient to nourish the vineyard properly : except some particular situations, we don’t ad any fertilizer nor compost. Thanks to this, the growth of the vine follows the capacity of the soil. The vigor is naturally low, so is the yield. This leads to the production of dense, ripe and balanced grapes which are the basis of the production of great terroir wines.
Reading these lines, you noticed that the qualitative objectives are in perfect coherence with the environmental and social concerns. We replaced the chemicals and the mecanisation by interesting human work!