501: This Conversation with Meike Näkel Has A Terrifying Turn

[00:00:02] I'm Levi Dalton and this is All Drink to That, where we get behind the scenes of the wine business.

[00:00:25] Mike A. Näkel of Näkelmeier in the R region of Germany on the show today. Hello, how are you?

[00:00:31] I'm very good, thank you.

[00:00:32] It's very nice to see you. Your dad was somewhat of a pioneer for red wine in Germany and your family winery has been based in the R now for several decades.

[00:00:42] Yes, the R region is one of the 13 German wine growing regions, but it's one of the smaller ones, so we are quite tiny.

[00:00:52] So we only have about 550 hectare of wines, so the complete region, compared to Germany, which has 100,000 hectare of wines.

[00:01:03] In the R Valley, we are not only tiny, we are also quite high in the north of Germany, far above the 50th degree of latitude.

[00:01:10] And people always said that this is some kind of climatic border for wine growing.

[00:01:16] But the R is a little river that created over millions of years a canyon-like valley.

[00:01:23] And the R runs from west to east, so one side of the valley is south-faced, so that the temperatures and the microclimate is higher compared to the surrounding area.

[00:01:34] So that wine growing was possible in our area.

[00:01:37] And together with the slate soil, which is a dark stone, which easily warms up, it's created a certain microclimate that wine growing, and especially Pinot Noir, is possible in our region.

[00:01:50] So these days, your winery makes over 90% red.

[00:01:54] And a lot of that is focused on Spade Burgunder, which is Pinot Noir.

[00:01:58] But what was the historical situation?

[00:02:00] If I went back 100 years ago, what would have been planted there?

[00:02:03] We have some hints that they started with red wine growing in our region in the 14th century, because there was some kind of duke who said that he prefers red wine so that all his people had to grow red wine in our region.

[00:02:19] And we have a hint from the 19th century.

[00:02:24] There was a French guy traveling Germany, and he wrote in his book that he found grapes in the R region that reminded him of the red grapes he knows from Burgundy.

[00:02:35] Your dad was the first person in the family to really make it a full on business.

[00:02:41] And even for him, it didn't start that way.

[00:02:43] It started more as a part time or almost a hobby.

[00:02:46] His job was as a gym teacher primarily.

[00:02:49] Yes, when you look in the times of my father, when he had to choose his profession for life, he started in an era where the R wines and the R region were successful, but where the reputation started to drop down.

[00:03:06] The wine reputation started to be very, very bad because the wine growers in that time, they were on mass production.

[00:03:15] And the wine tourism was more that tourism which was looking for being drunk as quick as possible.

[00:03:22] So both together created very bad qualities of the R wines in that time.

[00:03:29] And my father, he was not sure if it is possible to feed a family with this business.

[00:03:36] So our grandparents, they had a restaurant and they had one hectare of wine.

[00:03:42] And our father, he was very, very keen on wine and on good wine as well.

[00:03:47] But he was just not sure if in that time it is possible to earn money.

[00:03:53] And so he decided to be safe studying math and sports to be a teacher.

[00:03:59] And he always had in his mind that he wanted to be a part time wine grower to go on with the family business.

[00:04:06] So he finished his studies and started traveling around, seeing how other people in other regions and other countries are working with Pinot Noir.

[00:04:19] But the thing about your dad, whose name is Werner, and he's still alive, is that he was largely self-taught when it came to wine because of this route to it.

[00:04:29] And he learned by traveling around and speaking to people as opposed to someone who had said,

[00:04:35] OK, I know my family business is sizable enough.

[00:04:38] I'm positive that this is going to be my full time job.

[00:04:41] I'm going to go to Geisenheim.

[00:04:42] I'm going to study at university for a couple of years.

[00:04:44] That's not your dad.

[00:04:46] Your dad was largely an autodidact when it came to making wine.

[00:04:50] Yes, that is correct.

[00:04:52] If you look at those times, it was not like it is today.

[00:04:56] So there was no, I don't know if it's really, there was no interaction between the winemakers, but everything was much more close.

[00:05:05] When you look at the generation of my grandfather, everybody was afraid that the colleague or on the right or on the left or in other regions could like grab customers or money or getting ideas or secrets.

[00:05:23] So we always say the cellar doors were closed.

[00:05:26] And so for our father, he had no apprenticeship at all.

[00:05:32] And he had not like a lot of older wine growers to talk to.

[00:05:37] And so he said, okay, I have to travel around and to get my own ideas about wine growing.

[00:05:45] He saw that in our region, we had Pinot Noir grapes.

[00:05:49] And he was always thinking, okay, why are those wines coming out so bad?

[00:05:54] And those wines that he knew from Burgundy, for example, are so good.

[00:05:58] And he was just as an autodidact looking for ideas and some information, what he can do and what has to be done outside in the vineyard or in the cellar to make the quality of the wines better.

[00:06:14] So he started at a very early age working a little bit in the vineyard, but being interested and really thinking to overtake the winery was in the late 70s, early 80s.

[00:06:27] And the date when he really throw away his profession as a teacher and starting in the winery that was 1982.

[00:06:35] The 70s and 80s, that's maybe a different generation in Burgundy where your dad visited than would be around today.

[00:06:42] And your dad had a friend who was a chef or wanted to be a chef and they used to travel together.

[00:06:48] Yes, both of them were very keen on quality of food and of wine.

[00:06:54] They both traveled a lot to France to learn about all this gourmet stuff.

[00:07:00] Together they went once to the Burgundy region and had the great opportunity to meet Henri Jaillet.

[00:07:08] And my father, he was greatly inspired by him, by his openness to a young German wine grower he had never met before.

[00:07:17] Talking to him a lot about the way of treating Pinot Noir in Burgundy region, trying wines together in his cellar.

[00:07:28] I think he showed him that working together brings you further.

[00:07:35] So he shared so many secrets.

[00:07:38] In the opinion of my father, it were secrets.

[00:07:41] He shared so many ideas and gave him advice.

[00:07:47] Some of the things we associate with Henri Jaillet is something you just alluded to, which was a lot of openness to young people coming to visit.

[00:07:54] But the two things in terms of vineyard work and winemaking is he tended to askew chemical fertilizers.

[00:08:01] He tended to use less herbicide treatments.

[00:08:04] He tended to do a little better work than the time around him for vineyard work.

[00:08:10] And famously, he was into de-stemming grapes for Pinot Noir.

[00:08:15] Yes.

[00:08:16] All these are things my father perhaps saw firstly in the Burgundy region.

[00:08:22] He took a lot of these ideas with him to Germany to go on in our region.

[00:08:29] But I have to admit that it is in our region where we have a lot of steep slopes and a lot of handwork to do.

[00:08:36] It was some big deal to adapt a lot of those things, looking at the not using herbicides, for example, because it was not possible to use any machines in our region.

[00:08:52] And looking at the costs, what it costs to work a hectare of wine in the steep slopes, which is like three or four times higher than in the flat vineyards.

[00:09:05] So it was so much investment work in the vineyards and also into the mechanization machines that we can use in these deep slopes that it took us more or less two generations to achieve the complete biological work in our vineyards.

[00:09:25] Your dad developed a reputation for dry red wine from Spapergunder, amongst other great varieties.

[00:09:33] And it was in contrast to what was sort of the end of the popularity of sweet red wine from Germany that was often at higher yields.

[00:09:42] So after the war, you had a period where people were more drawn to sweet wines.

[00:09:48] Sometimes people viewed sweetness, as you've explained to me before, as a luxury that they were deprived from.

[00:09:55] This is before white Zinn.

[00:09:57] It's before cocktail culture and mostly Germany at the time was a culture of beer in the 60s and into the 70s.

[00:10:05] There was a real rise in the population of people drinking wine in Germany.

[00:10:08] But a lot of those were sweet wines, either white sweet wines or red sweet wines.

[00:10:12] And by the time your dad comes onto the scene, that trend was starting to tire out for red.

[00:10:19] So people were maybe looking for drier red wines.

[00:10:24] And here was your dad.

[00:10:26] As you said, after the Second World War, there was a certain lifestyle looking for sugar and looking for fat as well.

[00:10:34] So when you look at my grandmother's cooking, it was like today you would just run away because she was using so much fat and so much sugar.

[00:10:43] Everything was overloaded.

[00:10:45] And you found the same in the wines.

[00:10:48] They were sweet, not only in the R, but in complete Germany.

[00:10:52] And later they also started to be fat.

[00:10:55] And that was a changing in lifestyle starting in the end of the 70s, beginning of the 80s, that wine could also be dry.

[00:11:07] And my father was in that generation experiencing dry wines from other countries and also valuing those and seeing that with a dry wine in certain regions, you could get a bit more terroir characteristic in the wines.

[00:11:26] Also, the sweet wines, the noble sweet wines and the high quality sweet wines in Germany, they also show a lot of terroir.

[00:11:33] I'm not talking about that.

[00:11:34] I'm just talking about mass production wine, especially for Pinot Noir, which is like just crap.

[00:11:42] It never will be good.

[00:11:43] Pinot Noir is such a diva in wine growing that you cannot do any faults.

[00:11:49] It's always paying you back with some negative things.

[00:11:53] And especially for Pinot Noir, they tried to cover the lack of quality and the lack of body with sugar.

[00:12:02] So that was the reason why we were using sugar in the red wines as well.

[00:12:08] And my father, he just did not like that type of wine.

[00:12:11] And he said, I'm not going to produce a wine I do not like.

[00:12:14] He liked dry wines.

[00:12:15] And so this was his idea, taking over the wineries, stopping with adding sugar or having residual sugar in the wine, even if the customers were terrified and all running away and not buying anymore.

[00:12:29] And he said, no, I'm looking for other clients, customers liking my wine as I do.

[00:12:35] He was in that period of time where the challenge was maybe to get more ripeness.

[00:12:42] And one of the ways he went about that was through lower yields, because during that postwar period in Germany, yields tended to be high across the board for white and red.

[00:12:52] Yes, that is true.

[00:12:53] In Germany, we selected clones, not only for Pinot Noir, I think for all the varieties that had extremely high yields.

[00:13:02] So he had to work with the vineyards he had.

[00:13:05] So it was not for wine.

[00:13:07] It's not like, OK, next year I'm planting something else.

[00:13:10] It takes like a lot of years, decades to have a new vineyard and to get good grapes out of it.

[00:13:17] So he had to work with what he had.

[00:13:20] And so the first idea was to limit the yield.

[00:13:24] So to cut away more than 50 percent of the grapes that were growing and to give the grapes some air, taking away leaves as well.

[00:13:32] All the others were saying, OK, he's some kind of crazy.

[00:13:35] He's throwing away yield.

[00:13:37] All the others were using every berry for making wine, not to lose any money.

[00:13:42] And he was perhaps seen a little bit crazy, but he was so ambitious and so self-confident that this will work out.

[00:13:51] And yeah, today we are still very happy and grateful that that he went this way and he opened that quality doors, not only for us, but also for the complete region.

[00:14:03] And later on, a lot of people followed his idea and his quality standards.

[00:14:11] And I think all those wine growers in that time working together in the are looking for quality brought the region out of that sweet red wine corner festival area where bus tourism took place into a region with high quality standards today.

[00:14:31] And by the early to mid 90s, your dad was being talked about in wine guides as one of the better producers of red wine, if not one of the best in Germany.

[00:14:39] Yes, he, but also a lot of colleagues joining him in the wine business.

[00:14:46] You can never do it yourself.

[00:14:48] Yeah, it's always just working together.

[00:14:52] Yeah, sharing ideas.

[00:14:53] And he was very lucky that he found all over Germany, also in the membership of the VDP later on, a lot of colleagues also looking for high qualities for dry wines.

[00:15:05] Who are some of the other names that you would put as his contemporaries in red in Germany around the 80s into the 90s?

[00:15:12] Yeah.

[00:15:13] It was definitely Paul Furst, for example.

[00:15:16] It was Werner Knipser, Bernd Philippi, who is not alive nowadays.

[00:15:23] Of Köhler Ruprecht.

[00:15:24] Yes, of Köhler Ruprecht.

[00:15:25] It was Joachim Heger as well, but also together with some very nice Riesling producers like Helmut Dönhoff, for example.

[00:15:39] Like Wilhelm Haag, who is also not alive today.

[00:15:42] So it was a group of wine growers from more or less the same age working together and also presenting the German wine in other countries all together.

[00:15:52] Something that may have taken your dad by surprise is that you and your sister both decided they wanted to make wine or be involved with the winery, which maybe wasn't a given when you were a kid.

[00:16:04] I think he was sure that we are not going to do it because in that time, not so many girls and women were in the wine business.

[00:16:12] And he thought perhaps there is coming a son-in-law, perhaps, who's overtaking the winery.

[00:16:18] But he was really surprised as we both said, we want to do an apprenticeship and to learn everything about wine growing.

[00:16:25] Since the late 90s, you and your sister have largely run the winery and you divide the duties and you do a lot of things both together.

[00:16:34] But you're sort of more focused on the production side making wine and your sister is a little bit more focused on sales.

[00:16:41] We are a small winery and we only work with 10 people.

[00:16:44] So everybody has to know a little bit of everything because it could always happen that I can't do that job because I'm, I don't know, ill or whatever.

[00:16:55] Or that she cannot do anything.

[00:16:57] So we both know about the work of the other and we are discussing every single step.

[00:17:04] So it's not like that I say, okay, me, myself, I'm just doing any decisions what we are going to do with a certain winyard or what we are investing in the seller, for example.

[00:17:16] And actually, just as people, you're pretty different.

[00:17:19] I mean, you physically look different.

[00:17:21] You have a little bit of a different way about you in terms of how maybe you come to decisions or personal style or what's interesting to you or maybe a little more introvert, extrovert.

[00:17:30] Would you agree with that?

[00:17:32] Yes, we are completely different.

[00:17:34] If you would ask me at the age of 14, if I could imagine that I spent my life together in the winery with my sister, I don't know what I would have answered.

[00:17:47] Because in that time we were extremely different.

[00:17:51] But after the teenager years, after being grown up, we found out that being so different could also be a big opportunity.

[00:18:01] Because I'm very bad at decisions.

[00:18:05] I have to overthink like a hundred times.

[00:18:08] If I have to make a decision, I'm writing a diploma work on really small decisions.

[00:18:14] And my sister, she's much more intuitive.

[00:18:17] And making decisions together, being so different, makes it easy.

[00:18:22] And you worked also in France as an intern at Wineries.

[00:18:25] I took the opportunity to go to Burgundy and I worked for half a year with Dominique Lafon in Meursault.

[00:18:33] I really felt that they wanted me to learn about wine.

[00:18:37] I tried also the wines from home with him and he gave me advice.

[00:18:42] He said, no, you have to do it like that and that could be better.

[00:18:44] And this was extremely good experience.

[00:18:47] For example, cold soak maceration.

[00:18:49] We never used that in Germany before or not in my father's winery.

[00:18:54] That was something important.

[00:18:57] Or as well, making the malolactic fermentation later on.

[00:19:02] Not directly after harvest, but just leaving the nature its way and letting the temperatures coming up in spring

[00:19:10] and don't being so pressed to make wine ready.

[00:19:15] That wine just sometimes takes a time.

[00:19:18] Also, the idea of biodynamic works grew in me firstly when I worked with him because it was my first contact with biodynamics in that time.

[00:19:29] And these are all things that are playing to what's happening at your winery today.

[00:19:34] So you do about a seven day cold soak these days.

[00:19:37] You ferment in steel like Dominique does for his reds.

[00:19:41] And your mallow happens pretty late after the harvest relative on the spectrum of when it could happen.

[00:19:47] And then you've become more and more interested about not using chemicals in the vineyard.

[00:19:51] Yes, that's true.

[00:19:53] But it was the potpourri of impressions and experiences that I have during my first years.

[00:20:02] Also the ones in Germany with their colleagues which were also producing extremely good pinots, high quality pinots.

[00:20:11] I have a few weeks to Joachim Heger and Paul Furst in Franken.

[00:20:15] Then my time in the Burgundy region.

[00:20:17] And I learned so much what you can do outside in the vineyard, but also in the cellar.

[00:20:23] And for myself, I did a lot of tries.

[00:20:26] And it ended up by using this long cold soak maturation where I could conserve a lot of fruit aromas, pre-structures of aromas in that time of the cold soak maturation.

[00:20:40] Which I can freeze for the future because I have these slate soils, which are normally not that fruit given, but more the ones giving a lot of minerality and herbs or other aroma structures.

[00:20:56] And my idea about Pinot is to have a potpourri of a lot of things coming together.

[00:21:03] There should also be the fruit, there should also be the herbal thing, the minerality.

[00:21:10] Everything should be there and I think it makes the wine complete.

[00:21:14] Therefore my idea was a cold soak maturation time.

[00:21:19] Then I found out that the wine is more stable when I do the mellow later on.

[00:21:26] So it stays more stable and gives the wine more background for aging, for example.

[00:21:32] So I found out some things are good or not.

[00:21:35] For example, just using whole clusters is not that good for our wines because we are in the north.

[00:21:42] Even looking at climatic changes of changing of weather conditions of warmer temperatures,

[00:21:49] we still have stems that not in every year are really ripe.

[00:21:55] So when we use whole clusters, we have a lot of phenolic compounds, greenish stuff, pyrazine.

[00:22:04] We do not want to have it in our Pinot.

[00:22:06] So that is something that does not work out for us.

[00:22:09] So Pinot Noir is not about copy paste.

[00:22:11] It's about finding out what you personally like, but also what your terroir, your microclimate, your vineyard is giving you.

[00:22:22] And we want to underline what comes from our wines, from our vineyards.

[00:22:27] We want to have this specific terroir of the slate in our wines.

[00:22:31] And therefore we choose from the potpourri of experiences with other wine growers.

[00:22:37] We just try to find the best way for our vineyards and our wines.

[00:22:42] The climate and the rock type of your region already lend towards savory and fresh.

[00:22:48] And you're looking for more primary fruit and to build in more fruit.

[00:22:52] You're not looking to build in more lean savory characters into the wine.

[00:22:57] And that might be different if I was in Burgundy at a different elevation with clay, where maybe if I did an extended cold soak there, it would seem really fruity.

[00:23:08] For you, if you do a seven day cold soak, it seems more balanced because the rock type itself and the climate itself lends towards more savory.

[00:23:18] So you get a mix.

[00:23:20] Yes, yes.

[00:23:22] And comparing soil structure in most parts of Burgundy and in the R, it's like the opposite.

[00:23:27] Having clay means that you have a high pH in the soil as well.

[00:23:32] Having slate means that you have a low pH in the soil.

[00:23:35] So the complete structure of the soil, of the nutritions in the soil, of the minerality in the soil is contrary.

[00:23:43] So complete opposite.

[00:23:45] But that is so fantastic about Pinot Noir that it can handle it both.

[00:23:50] Also, when you look at the soils Paul Fust is working on.

[00:23:54] The sandstone, yeah.

[00:23:55] Also again, very, very different.

[00:23:57] And Pinot Noir can handle all of it showing just completely different.

[00:24:02] And I think it's extremely important to work with that knowledge so that you don't think, okay, I'm having slate soil.

[00:24:13] How can I make my wine tasting more like one from Burgundy, one from Cotonouis, one from whatever?

[00:24:20] It's more like you have to say, okay, how can I make my wine tasting of slate, tasting of the R?

[00:24:27] How would you compare the wines of your era with your sister, with your dad?

[00:24:33] I mean, what were the concerns of the time and how have those concerns shifted if you were to just generalize about the period of your dad to your period now?

[00:24:43] When our father started, it was colder.

[00:24:46] It was really colder.

[00:24:47] Looking at the climatic situation, it was more difficult to get nicely ripe grapes.

[00:24:55] And in addition, it was a time when the German wine drinker wanted to have an extremely full-bodied dark red wine.

[00:25:05] So otherwise, it was not red wine.

[00:25:07] We had a lot of red wine coming from other countries into Germany.

[00:25:11] We imported a lot.

[00:25:14] The reputation of German red wine was like, okay, in Germany, it is too cold to make good red wine.

[00:25:20] We have, but it's disgusting.

[00:25:22] We do not want it.

[00:25:23] It was more like always glorifying other countries and other red wines.

[00:25:27] And so his first years were always looking for high quality, but also high ripeness to have this full-body wine.

[00:25:40] So to cut the yield extremely, having just a few grapes, which went perfectly ripe in our terms today, a bit overripe,

[00:25:49] like nearly 14% of alcohol.

[00:25:51] And this was a really heavy and full-bodied wine, which German wine drinkers were looking for at that time.

[00:25:59] Not only for my father, but for all his colleagues, they were looking for wines which were extremely full-bodied.

[00:26:07] And that ended up in having this high alcohol as well.

[00:26:11] And then, over the decades, climate change started.

[00:26:15] It was not that difficult anymore to get the sugar content.

[00:26:19] Now the acidity drops down too much when we wait so long.

[00:26:23] And we were affected by hot and dry summers that started in 2003, firstly, having the first extremely warm summer,

[00:26:32] and having Oechsla we were dreaming of before, and then ending up in 2011 being a standard.

[00:26:41] So every year was hot, and it was always like having Oechsla as much as you want.

[00:26:46] And we saw that the acidity dropped.

[00:26:48] The pH went too high, and we had to react on that.

[00:26:51] And we said, okay, we have to change the complete system in the vineyard.

[00:26:56] We have to give more shadow, not putting away all the leaves so that so much sun as possible can enter to the grapes.

[00:27:03] We have to give a bit more shade, that the ripeness is not that quick, so that it's a bit longer and not picking in the end of August.

[00:27:11] And giving it a bit more time for the aroma structures to be created in the grapes for the acidity to stay.

[00:27:18] And so we changed the system outside a lot in our days, but just step by step.

[00:27:23] For a wine, you have to wait like one or two years to really see the result, what you do outside and what ends up in the bottle.

[00:27:31] So it took us some years to find our way in our a bit cooler area to finding how to work the vineyards exactly,

[00:27:39] and how to have this freshness of fruit and to keep the tension of the acidity as well, which is extremely important for Pinot.

[00:27:48] So our wines nowadays, coming back to your question,

[00:27:51] the wines of our father were more full-bodied, higher in alcohol, being perhaps a bit overloaded.

[00:28:00] When you look today on those wines, which in that time were perfect and the thing everybody was looking for.

[00:28:08] And today, it's so easy to get the ripeness, but to maintain the freshness is a bit more difficult.

[00:28:16] And that is what we do today. We try to have the wines ripe.

[00:28:20] We try to have the wines full, full-bodied, but always with the balance and the tension of the acidity.

[00:28:28] So you could say they are perhaps a bit more elegant than the wines of our father.

[00:28:35] And it's worth noting here that neither in a period of your father or now has there been a consulting analogist.

[00:28:42] It's not like someone comes and does the blends with you or tells you what might be better in terms of the wine.

[00:28:48] Not at all. We are all doing it ourselves, if it is helpful or not.

[00:28:55] Charting a changing future for Pinot Noir in a country that already grows a lot of Pinot Noir.

[00:29:03] Germany is the third biggest producer of Pinot Noir worldwide.

[00:29:07] So we have firstly France, then we have the US, then we have Germany and then on place four is New Zealand.

[00:29:16] We'll hear more after the break.

[00:29:18] I talk to winemakers all the time.

[00:29:22] And something they tell me is that oxygen management is a key to aging wine.

[00:29:28] Finding the right balance is crucial.

[00:29:31] And that's why I recommend DM's revolutionary cork closures.

[00:29:36] With DM corks, winemakers can achieve precisely controlled oxygen management after a bottle leaves the winery.

[00:29:44] Ensuring a wine that matures gracefully and reaches its full potential.

[00:29:48] With over 2 billion DM corks sold each year, it's clear that winemakers worldwide trust DM for consistent results.

[00:29:57] And DM has recently expanded the permeability options for their popular DM10 and DM30 closures.

[00:30:04] Providing winemakers with even more flexibility to choose a cork that will guarantee the kind of wine life they envision.

[00:30:13] Banish surprise dud bottles and embrace DM closures.

[00:30:17] Your customers will thank you.

[00:30:20] Ready to ensure the lifespan of your wines?

[00:30:22] Go to DM-closures.com forward slash IDTT to learn more.

[00:30:30] That's D-I-A-M dash closures with an S dot com forward slash IDTT for more information.

[00:30:39] I find it really easy to talk to you because we kind of think along the same lines in terms of rocks and climate and freshness as opposed to fruit.

[00:30:48] And we kind of talk in the same parameters often when we're talking about Pinot.

[00:30:52] But typically in the German Pinot discussion that I've read or talked to other people, the thing that's talked about the most is clone.

[00:31:00] The clone of the Pinot Noir.

[00:31:02] And you know, that's not something you've really touched on much.

[00:31:05] You mentioned that in the old days they were higher yielding.

[00:31:08] But what do you think about that topic?

[00:31:11] We talked about that a lot in our family with our father.

[00:31:15] He overtook a lot of vineyards which were planted with those mass production clones because he started with one hectare.

[00:31:25] And today we work like 22 hectares in the winery.

[00:31:29] So nearly all of the size was made in the time of our father.

[00:31:34] So nowadays we are not buying new vineyards.

[00:31:37] We have those 22 hectares and we are fine with that.

[00:31:40] And he had to overtake a lot of vineyards buying or renting with those mass production clones.

[00:31:48] And he went on with some of them because they were old wines.

[00:31:53] Old wines.

[00:31:54] And cutting the yield makes really good quality.

[00:31:58] But he also started 30 years ago to import clones from France, from Burgundy region, putting in our vineyards.

[00:32:08] And we both, our father and also my sister and me, have the experience that a mix is working quite good for us.

[00:32:17] So having the German clones, which have perhaps a little bit more size when you look at the grape itself, a little bit more loser berries, having a nice acidity.

[00:32:29] Vignettes, which are old, having deep roots, together in combination with the French clones, not only the clones, but also Selection Massal, both together make a good mix and a good match as well.

[00:32:43] Clones are important, but it's not all about clones.

[00:32:46] It's a lot about what you make out of it.

[00:32:50] What about a topic like hedging, you know, topping, where you cut the very top of the vine?

[00:32:56] If I had to make a guess, I would say you're doing less of that than your dad did?

[00:33:00] Yes, but that has something to do with the organic treatment as well.

[00:33:05] Our father was sometimes, but not often, using fertilizers, for example, organic fertilizers mainly.

[00:33:14] But when he thought, okay, that is not growing, he used like some nitrogen fertilizers.

[00:33:20] Not often, but sometimes he did.

[00:33:23] And nowadays, we are not using it at all.

[00:33:28] We try that we don't have to cut too much so that we don't have to interact or to disturb the plant itself.

[00:33:38] And when possible, and when the time and the year and the circumstances give us the possibility, we do not cut at all.

[00:33:48] We let the wine grow as much as it wants, and we just make a braid on the top of the wines that we don't have to cut them,

[00:34:00] but we put them together like that so that we can still go through with machines.

[00:34:04] When you look at the biodynamic idea, it would be best to not do anything, just to let them grow.

[00:34:12] But there's a need to do a little bit of mechanization, so we have to keep the wines in shape and we want to have a yield,

[00:34:19] so we have to do a little bit.

[00:34:21] Even if biodynamics would say, just let everything grow.

[00:34:26] When you do cutting, when you do the topping, then the phytohormones says, okay, here is some stress.

[00:34:36] We are losing our leaves, we are losing branches.

[00:34:40] All the energy has to come out from the roots, from the complete plant entering into the greens,

[00:34:47] producing more leaves, more branches, more everything.

[00:34:51] You get more laterals, they say in California.

[00:34:54] You get more horizontal growth.

[00:34:57] Yes, that's it.

[00:34:59] So we lose the energy from the roots.

[00:35:02] And so we try to avoid too much topping, too much cutting, too much taking away leaves,

[00:35:09] because we also want the energy in the roots to grow deeper and deeper and deeper

[00:35:13] and to get the nutrition and the water also in times where we don't have enough water

[00:35:19] and where the plant, for example, has to suffer a little bit in the summertime.

[00:35:27] Nowadays, we had a big change in the water or in the climatic situation,

[00:35:34] weather conditions in our area, but I think all over Germany, all over Europe.

[00:35:39] We have more these weather conditions that are always extreme.

[00:35:44] In the past, when our father was growing wine, it was really stable.

[00:35:49] It was very wet.

[00:35:51] We had a lot of humidity in summer as well, so we had to fight rot a lot.

[00:35:57] It was always botrytis in the grapes.

[00:36:00] It was always wet.

[00:36:01] We had a lot of rain in the summertime, extremely nice for the plants,

[00:36:07] not so good for the grapes sometimes because we had to struggle a lot to keep everything healthy.

[00:36:15] And then it really, more or less suddenly, it started to be dry a lot in the summer with certain very high intense raining times.

[00:36:29] In the past, the plants were always at good nutrition and good water conditions all over the year.

[00:36:36] And nowadays, they have to struggle much more because of this extreme weather,

[00:36:40] sometimes having too much rain and sometimes having no rain at all.

[00:36:45] Well, you do make a Fröbergunder and maybe in other regions that would also be thought of as a Pinot Noir,

[00:36:51] but it's a specific kind of Pinot Noir that in your region has its own name.

[00:36:56] And so what would be the difference between a Fröbergunder and a Spätburgunder?

[00:37:00] When you look to the Burgundy region, they would only say that Fröbergunder is a clone of the Pinot Noir.

[00:37:06] It's very, very similar and very close to the Spätburgunder.

[00:37:11] And it is really very close to it.

[00:37:14] It was selected in Germany over generations out of the Spätburgunder, out of the Pinot Noir,

[00:37:20] with the aim to have a Pinot Noir which rips a little bit earlier.

[00:37:24] So the naming Fröbergunder means early, Spätburgunder means late.

[00:37:30] And over generations, wine growers selected themselves these plants out of vineyards,

[00:37:38] which were a little bit earlier, ending up by having a variety that is about three weeks earlier ripe,

[00:37:44] which is a bit lower in yield.

[00:37:47] So if you select a certain characteristic, you also always select other things around.

[00:37:55] So it was not this earlier ripeness, it was a bit of a lower yield.

[00:38:00] It was a bit of smaller grapes, smaller berries with a bit of lighter skin,

[00:38:07] but extremely intense fruit characteristic.

[00:38:10] It's always very much on berries, forest berries.

[00:38:15] And the tannin structure is a bit smoother.

[00:38:17] So in France, I think it's just a clone, but in Germany they said genetically it's a variety in its own right,

[00:38:24] and it got its own name.

[00:38:26] So it's a Fröbergunder, which is still not grown a lot,

[00:38:31] because economically it's a disaster.

[00:38:34] Because of the earlier ripeness, it suffers a lot.

[00:38:40] When in summertime there's a hard rainfall and it rots easily,

[00:38:43] and you have to do a lot of selection work,

[00:38:46] but it's so unique and special that we still go on with it.

[00:38:50] We make a range of Spätburgunder at different prices and in different ways,

[00:38:55] by which I mean some are blended between parcels,

[00:38:57] some are Groskowasks, which are the top crews that are named.

[00:39:01] And when you selected those and you said,

[00:39:06] okay, this vineyard is going to be part of a blend,

[00:39:09] or this vineyard will be bottled by itself,

[00:39:11] but it's not going to be Groskowasks, or this will be Groskowasks,

[00:39:15] what were you looking for?

[00:39:16] What were the criteria to your mind?

[00:39:19] The German quality system has a bit of a different story compared to other countries,

[00:39:27] especially compared to France.

[00:39:31] With the German wine law in 1971,

[00:39:34] we had the problem that we were not looking at the vineyard itself,

[00:39:40] but that the system changed so much towards sugar content

[00:39:45] that we don't had in those times any classification system left.

[00:39:51] A lot of small vineyards with high potential and extremely good characteristics just...

[00:39:59] A lot of times they were absorbed into bigger Groslagen, right?

[00:40:03] Yeah, that's it.

[00:40:04] And it was not possible to work with that anymore.

[00:40:08] So it was a disaster for German wine quality.

[00:40:12] And so only we started in the VDP like a hundred years ago to...

[00:40:20] And especially after 1971 to restart again with a classification system.

[00:40:25] And we are following that very strictly, looking at the qualities the vineyards give to us nowadays,

[00:40:33] but also looking at historical documents, cards, vineyards, classification.

[00:40:40] We have a lot of hints about the taxes that had to be paid like 100 years ago or 200 years ago

[00:40:48] for working a certain vineyard to looking for hints for classification over there as well.

[00:40:53] And we do a lot of trying, yeah?

[00:40:57] Just trying the wine, older vintages, how the wine develops to see how the value of a vineyard itself is.

[00:41:06] So that is the work the generation before me and my generation and the following one has to do

[00:41:14] to settle up a new classification system for the German wine.

[00:41:18] If I were trying bottles, I might be hard-pressed to know if I was responding to vine age or yields in a particular vintage

[00:41:27] rather than the quality of the vineyard site itself.

[00:41:30] When you look at the wines that you've chosen as Grosso Skavachs, like the best vineyards,

[00:41:34] do they share characteristics in general?

[00:41:38] The characteristic they share is that the wines are really individual, so that they are not comparable at all,

[00:41:45] that they all have their very own special characteristic which is unique and

[00:41:50] Grosso Lage or Grand Cru, whatever, is something very special that you find every year or nearly every year.

[00:41:58] So that you have a special characteristic where you can say, okay, that is very typical for this vineyard and this comes up nearly every year.

[00:42:06] For example, when you look at our Pfarvingat, which is situated in Derna, which is our hometown where our winery is situated,

[00:42:14] we have every year a high impact of slate because of the soil structure.

[00:42:19] We have extremely steep slopes here.

[00:42:22] We have a slate soil which is in a very high grade of decomposition.

[00:42:26] So you find bigger pieces of slate, smaller pieces of slate.

[00:42:30] You find even sand, a slate which is in a very high grade of decomposition.

[00:42:37] For us, it's the best example what happens when you use Pinot Noir on this extreme slate soil,

[00:42:42] that you have this minerality which comes out in warmer years with earthiness, in colder years with steely aromatics,

[00:42:53] which is very, very typical.

[00:42:55] And when you look at the fruit, it's always cherry.

[00:42:59] Sometimes it's a Morello cherry, sometimes it's a big, nearly black cherry.

[00:43:04] So always depending a little bit on the situation of the vintage.

[00:43:08] That is typical, for example, for Pfarvingat.

[00:43:10] Then when you look to Kräuterberg, which is also a GG from us, like four kilometers away in Walpotsheim,

[00:43:19] there we have old terraces which are made of slate but also a little bit of grey vecchi stone inside

[00:43:27] and a bit of loam and loess, so a bit more fertile.

[00:43:31] In those wines, you always find much more herbal stuff.

[00:43:36] You never find in Fafingat, but very, very typical for those terraces that you have this herbal stuff.

[00:43:42] Sometimes a bit etheric when you look to colder years,

[00:43:46] sometimes a bit more like warmer herbs when you look in warm years.

[00:43:52] So it's not like I try your wines every day or even specifically from every vintage.

[00:43:58] I've enjoyed them for a long time.

[00:44:00] I probably have been tasting them for 10 or 11 years, but somewhat sporadically.

[00:44:04] To me, from that viewpoint, it seems like some of the wines I tried before were perhaps bigger in the mouth,

[00:44:13] a little more extracted perhaps, and with maybe more some kind of burnt orange character sometimes.

[00:44:18] Not every bottle, but sometimes that kind of burnt orange sometimes you get with Pinot that are a little bigger and darker.

[00:44:24] And now when I taste the 20-22s, I mean, they seem to have a level of gracefulness that's not the same as those wines from before.

[00:44:34] And I think they're both good wines, but there's perhaps been an evolution or perhaps it's just that vintage that's different.

[00:44:40] No, I think it's an evolution.

[00:44:43] But I think as well that it is something very natural and also necessary that when you switch from one generation to the other, that there has to be an evolution.

[00:44:54] I think that it is necessary for the future for every wine estate that you put in your own ideas about wine growing and that you also catch the lifestyle that is in that area of your work.

[00:45:11] So when you look at the lifestyle today on food and drinks, everything should be more elegant and lighter.

[00:45:21] Nobody wants a full body and thick wine and food.

[00:45:24] And I think every generation interprets the terroir differently.

[00:45:30] For us, it's like when you want really, really to show the terroir in your wines, especially on Pinot Noir, because we can just talk about Pinot Noir.

[00:45:39] Then you have to be moderate with extraction and with alcohol really to show the typicity of the soil and the typicity of the microclimate.

[00:45:50] And only by being a bit more moderate in those things, you can show the hidden secrets of your area.

[00:45:59] Sometimes when people talk about this topic kind of writ large, they talk about the move from extraction to infusion, which sounds like a complex notion.

[00:46:08] But largely often what they're talking about is the amount of punchdowns that do or do not happen and when they happen.

[00:46:14] And so you've sort of already addressed the cold soak part, but maybe we could talk a little bit about punchdowns and how you approach that and then maybe how the use of oak is evolved over years.

[00:46:25] We use 100% native yeasts.

[00:46:28] So we do not inoculate with any selected yeast at all.

[00:46:33] So 100% spontaneous fermentation.

[00:46:36] When I started in the winery, we were just doing punchdowns, just from the first day to the last of the maturation time.

[00:46:45] So we wanted to extract a lot.

[00:46:47] We wanted to extract every single tenon that was in the berries and every single color pigment which was inside.

[00:46:57] I think the idea was to achieve an extracted and full bodied Pinot Noir, which was good.

[00:47:05] Yeah. In that time it was really good.

[00:47:07] But we moved to this part of more infusion by doing pumping overs, the remontage, to not extracting too many tenons from the skins and not to oxidize too much.

[00:47:24] We want more of the reductive style.

[00:47:26] So we do this pumping over and the surface is always covered with a little bit of CO2 so that all the O2 more or less is gone so that we have more of the reductive way.

[00:47:39] So over the complete maturation time, we do just pumping overs.

[00:47:44] And only at the end when the fermentation is nearly done, so when there's no sugar content, we do a little bit of punching down to open up the last berries so that the sugar comes out and doing a little bit of extraction work.

[00:47:57] I think different histories exist for Germany and for Burgundy in terms of Pinot Noir, but something that until fairly recently was fairly common in Burgundy for red Burgundy was chappalization.

[00:48:11] And what are your thoughts about chappalization for Pinot Noir in your region historically and now?

[00:48:17] I think chappalization is not something you can look at just in black and white.

[00:48:24] It's not all about just making the alcohol higher.

[00:48:27] So it's not like, okay, the grapes are not ripe enough and now I have to chappalize or I want to have a very high alcohol and now I chappalize.

[00:48:34] I think chappalization is something you can change the style of your Pinot wines later on because harvesting a Pinot Noir is always a challenge.

[00:48:49] So your perfect Pinot Noir would be perfect in sugar, in acidity, in aroma, in tannin, in phenolics, in everything.

[00:48:59] But the nature is nearly never giving you the perfect and you always have to make a decision.

[00:49:05] Sometimes you go outside, you want to pick and you're tasting your grapes and you think, okay, the sugar level is good, but they are not yet tasting.

[00:49:16] They don't have the complete aroma or the phenolic structure is not yet enough.

[00:49:21] So you wait a little bit longer saying, okay, this year my alcohol will be perhaps a little bit higher because the rest was not ready.

[00:49:31] But another year, everything is good.

[00:49:34] The aromatics are good.

[00:49:36] The tannins are good.

[00:49:37] But the acidity is dropping down and you make the decision, okay, I have to pick them because otherwise the acidity drops too much and I'm losing freshness.

[00:49:46] But the sugar content was not yet good.

[00:49:49] But now make the decision, I'm going to pick, but I'm going to chapterize just a little bit to have a little bit more body or to have it a little bit more in a balance.

[00:50:00] So it's not that chapterization is always bad.

[00:50:03] So it could happen that, for example, you have a lot of rot outside and you have to pick and you don't have any chance.

[00:50:12] You cannot wait at all.

[00:50:13] And then it could be very helpful to have a little bit of chapterization.

[00:50:17] So I wouldn't say that it is bad, but I would always prefer not to use chapterization if possible.

[00:50:25] But nature is sometimes like you have to.

[00:50:27] In Burgundy, something that I've seen amongst some producers over the last decade or two decades is that there's a conscious effort to pump less.

[00:50:38] To pump less in a winery and especially not to pump must.

[00:50:44] And it seems like you also would prefer to pump less.

[00:50:47] Is that true?

[00:50:48] Yeah, that is true.

[00:50:49] We try to do as much as possible by gravitation.

[00:50:54] We try to avoid to move the wine too much.

[00:51:00] So when you look at our complete production process, we get the grapes in just by gravity.

[00:51:06] Then we do the fermentation in a cuve and then we get the wine out with gravity later on into the barrels without pumping.

[00:51:16] And then the wine stays in the barrels for like in between 14 and 18 months without moving it at all.

[00:51:24] So we are not touching it.

[00:51:26] We are not wrecking it, nothing.

[00:51:27] And we take them out from the barrel for the preparation for bottling.

[00:51:35] How about that use of oak?

[00:51:36] Has that changed over the years?

[00:51:38] Also, that is a big difference.

[00:51:40] In the past, we used a lot of new oak because you have to look at that time.

[00:51:46] We have this full-bodied, very heavy pinos, which had a need to get freshness from new oak.

[00:51:54] So a lot of new oak was used.

[00:51:55] And nowadays, we go back from the new oak just using a little bit, like in between 10 and 30 percent maximum,

[00:52:03] because the wines today just need a little bit of underlining with new oak.

[00:52:10] You do make some white, but not very much.

[00:52:13] So you make one Riesling and it's raised in cask and obviously grown on blue slate.

[00:52:19] And then you do have a bit of Chardonnay and maybe some Pinot Blanc for sparkling.

[00:52:23] And would you consider yourself a red winemaker who makes white wine?

[00:52:29] Or would you consider yourself someone who makes two very different things?

[00:52:33] Or has the experience of one played into the experience of the others?

[00:52:37] I'm still working this out for me myself.

[00:52:39] Because in the moment, we do have Riesling and Pinot Blanc in vineyards that are not the top.

[00:52:47] Yeah, so normally we should, to make it more seriously, we should plant ourselves those other grape varieties into our best vineyards.

[00:52:58] So it's not like in Burgundy or in other regions where you can just buy a vineyard, which is planted with old Chardonnay or Riesling or whatever,

[00:53:07] and go on with the work in Große Lage, for example.

[00:53:11] For us, nearly everything is planted with Pinot Noir.

[00:53:13] So we should make the step or the planting of other varieties in very good vineyards to be top, top.

[00:53:22] So in the moment, we do have whites that we make as Ortswine, so as Village wines.

[00:53:29] So in the middle of the quality level.

[00:53:32] But we try to make it very seriously.

[00:53:35] So that we decided in the last years to skip all the Pinot Blanc vineyard, which is not that good.

[00:53:43] We gave it away and we focus on the bit better vineyards for the future.

[00:53:48] But we are not at the end.

[00:53:50] And it seems to me, from my vantage point in New York, that there's more and more interest globally in the export markets for German Pinot Noir.

[00:53:58] Is that something you also see?

[00:54:00] We see that definitely.

[00:54:01] When I started, I remember very clearly my first visit to London with an importer who was only doing German wines.

[00:54:12] And I was the first one with the reds.

[00:54:15] And people, they were just like, okay, no, that cannot be you.

[00:54:19] You have the wrong wine in your bottle because you're German and it is red.

[00:54:22] I felt like an ambassador for explaining people that we also grow red wine and especially that we grow Pinot Noir in Germany.

[00:54:30] So over the last few decades, people really realized that we have good stuff in Germany.

[00:54:37] If you were to overgeneralize and you were to say, here are some general characteristics that I see about German Pinot Noir that's different than Burgundy, that's maybe different than New Zealand Pinot Noir, that's different than a few different regions of California or Oregon.

[00:54:54] What would those overgeneralizations be if you were to say, you know, here's a way that German Pinot Noir is perhaps different than Pinot Noir I might find in other parts of the world?

[00:55:06] Germany is the third biggest producer of Pinot Noir worldwide.

[00:55:10] So we have firstly France, then we have the US, then we have Germany and then on place four is New Zealand.

[00:55:19] And we do not have this Pinot Noir in one region.

[00:55:24] So when you look to France, you have, okay, you also have Pinot Noir in the Champagne, but you mainly have it in the Burgundy region.

[00:55:31] And in Germany, we have it spread over the complete country.

[00:55:36] So nearly every wine growing region is also doing Pinot Noir.

[00:55:41] So it's not like that we have one spot with a certain terroir, which gives a certain type of Pinot Noir.

[00:55:47] And that is what Pinot Noir is about, that it is so diverse and reacts so much to the soil that it shows up with so many different terroirs.

[00:55:56] And so there is not one German style of Pinot Noir.

[00:56:00] It is not existing.

[00:56:01] The one in the R made on slate is completely different to the one that is made in Baden on chalk or which is made on sandstone or whatever.

[00:56:13] So it could happen if you do a blind tasting with 13 different Pinot Noirs from all 13 German wine growing regions, then you could think that it's different varieties.

[00:56:27] So this question is not to answer because we have a very high diversity.

[00:56:33] And I think that is one of the big advantages that we have in Germany, that we grow Pinot Noir in so many different terroirs.

[00:56:41] I think if I was confronted with the same question, I might refer to alcohol levels in a sense of freshness.

[00:56:48] And I just am mentioning this because I'm curious if you think that that would be wrong.

[00:56:53] If I were to say to you, overgeneralizing, I think German Pinot Noir often brings a real freshness and lift to the table that I don't necessarily see in a lot of Pinot Noir from California at this time.

[00:57:07] Would that make sense as a comment?

[00:57:10] Yes, that definitely makes sense.

[00:57:12] I think that comes because the German wine growers looking at Pinot Noir, we all know that we have the big advantage being in a climatic zone, which is not too hot.

[00:57:24] And we really want to keep this advantage for our wines to show up with this bit more lightness and freshness and acidity.

[00:57:35] Because we have those years which are cooler.

[00:57:39] They really exist.

[00:57:40] And so we want to have this advantage and to show this in our wines that we are in a cool climate area.

[00:57:47] A single day can change everything.

[00:57:51] We lost for our father losing his life work, losing all those old wines.

[00:57:57] That's after this message.

[00:58:01] Would you like to hear more new episodes of All Drink to That?

[00:58:04] Consider making a gift donation to support the program.

[00:58:08] You can donate from anywhere by making use of the PayPal or Stripe links on the show website.

[00:58:13] And that website is alldrinktothatpod.com.

[00:58:17] That's I-L-L-Drinktothatpod.com to directly support the show.

[00:58:23] Look for the PayPal or Stripe insignia.

[00:58:26] Direct donations are the number one reason that this show continues to exist.

[00:58:32] Do your part today.

[00:58:33] You mentioned earlier in an interview that sometimes in this climate, it doesn't just mean that it's warmer.

[00:58:41] It can mean that.

[00:58:42] But it can also mean more rain.

[00:58:44] And you had a really serious expression of that in 2021 in your region.

[00:58:52] In 2021, we had the big flood in our region.

[00:58:57] At the beginning of the interview, I told you that we have a small river that created over millions of years a canyon-like valley.

[00:59:08] And that was that river and that water, which had so much power to create a landscape that we have today.

[00:59:16] But we were not, we knew it, but we were not really thinking about that event like that could happen to us in our lifetime.

[00:59:26] We had, yeah, the biggest nature catastrophe that we had in Germany since the beginning of people writing something like that down.

[00:59:41] In the middle of July, there was a weather forecast where they said there was a lot of rain coming in the western part of Germany.

[00:59:49] And especially for our region, the forecast for high water.

[00:59:55] We are living beside a river and we are used to that.

[00:59:59] So we did all this preparation work on the day where the rain was forecasted.

[01:00:05] So it was the 14th of July.

[01:00:06] And we prepared that day with packing sand sacks, taking away all the machines or techniques that should not be wet to put in higher areas of the binary.

[01:00:22] And I remember that day extremely good because we're doing all this preparation work and all the sand sacks were sold out.

[01:00:31] We were not getting any and we were like ordering some with Amazon Express to get those empty sand sacks being delivered in time so that we could pack them ourselves.

[01:00:43] And the complete team, like 10 people were doing nothing else the complete day but preparing the binary against this high water.

[01:00:54] So we took three tons of sand that we made into sand sacks.

[01:01:01] The whole buildings, we covered them with sand sacks so that no water can come in like we always did in the last years.

[01:01:10] And looking back, this was so much work just ending in nothing.

[01:01:17] Because the sand sacks, they leased it just half an hour or not more.

[01:01:21] So because the water that came that day was like a flood wave that entered our valley because there was so much rain coming in the afternoon.

[01:01:33] Normally, the R is a very small river.

[01:01:35] In summertime, you can just walk through and your knees are not getting wet normally.

[01:01:41] But at that day and that night, the river had like 10 meters high.

[01:01:47] Everything was...

[01:01:49] I think when I look back at that day, sometimes it resembles me to be extremely long.

[01:01:55] But sometimes I have the impression that it was just one hour long because everything went so quick.

[01:02:01] And when the water started to come, it started from like 10 centimeters to 4 meters like in one hour.

[01:02:10] And yeah, that is a day I will never forget in my life.

[01:02:21] It destroyed our complete binary.

[01:02:24] It changed our lives.

[01:02:25] It really changed our complete lives.

[01:02:27] But not only our lives, but also the lives of the complete region.

[01:02:31] The 135 people in the region died.

[01:02:35] In our village, which has only 1,800 habitants, 20 people died because they couldn't get away from the water quick enough.

[01:02:48] The rain starts to fall and you decided that you need to go to the winery.

[01:02:54] My sister and me, we were the last two remaining in the winery.

[01:02:59] And to protect our property against the water, we wanted to be sure that every leak is filled with a new sand sack, that no water is coming in.

[01:03:08] And so we decided to stay the night inside the building.

[01:03:13] We did not know at all what will happen later on because in that case, we wouldn't have made this decision to stay.

[01:03:22] Later on in that night, we found ourselves in life danger because the water rose so quickly and so high.

[01:03:31] And it had so much power that our building had no chance at all.

[01:03:36] So all the doors broke, the sand sacks were gone and the water went up so quickly with so much strength that it entered the building through every window, through every door, through every gate in seconds.

[01:03:53] And not only that, it had a lot of strength.

[01:03:57] It brought so many things inside, big trees, swimming, like gas tanks coming in from one second to the next.

[01:04:07] It was, okay, it is a bit dangerous to the moment when you realize that you are in complete life danger, that swimming is dangerous.

[01:04:17] Because there were so many things swimming in the water with this high strength and it was quick, the water.

[01:04:25] We did not know what is best to stay or not.

[01:04:28] But when all the gas tanks were coming in and we had the smell of gas, we were not sure what to do.

[01:04:38] We felt that this building could explode any second.

[01:04:41] And so we made the decision that we have to go away, that it is not secure at all.

[01:04:48] And that the danger of swimming into this river that was absolutely dangerous is that it is a better choice than to stay and to burn from gas.

[01:05:01] So that we decided to go out and to swim into that river and hopefully to get to the shore, to a dry place.

[01:05:11] When we went out of a window which was left, which we could break, where we could swim out, I thought in the first moment, okay, we have done it.

[01:05:21] And my sister, she always says, I was really in the fear when we went out, feeling the opposite of me.

[01:05:30] I was relieved.

[01:05:31] And she thought, okay, no, it will be even worse.

[01:05:34] It was so helpful that we both were together because I was always talking, okay, now we swim over there and we grab a tree over there or we can hold over there.

[01:05:44] And she was like panicking.

[01:05:47] And later on in that evening, because it was, I don't know how it happened, but we started swimming and in this water.

[01:05:56] And normally it is absolutely impossible to stay together because there was so much strength.

[01:06:04] I don't know how we managed it, but we were together.

[01:06:07] My sisters, I remember that she was like, I was not seeing her because it was dark and she was shouting at me and I was just trying to swim where I heard her.

[01:06:17] And also the other way around and we ended up, we found some trees and where we grabbed a tree and grabbed another tree.

[01:06:24] And then we ended up in being on a tree and we saw, okay, this is the end.

[01:06:30] We cannot go anymore.

[01:06:31] So the water was rising.

[01:06:33] It was like four or five meters high and we grabbed the tree just on the top.

[01:06:38] We did not know where we were because it was dark and it was so loud, but it was possible to stick together.

[01:06:45] And then my sister calmed down and I was panicking.

[01:06:48] I was thinking, okay, we don't have a chance.

[01:06:50] We cannot do anything.

[01:06:51] I don't see the next step that we can do.

[01:06:53] We have to stay here.

[01:06:55] And then in that moment, she was calming me down and said, okay, we just stay here.

[01:06:59] We have a chance.

[01:07:01] We can grab the tree.

[01:07:02] We stay together.

[01:07:03] It was like we were encouraging each other.

[01:07:08] And I don't know how we would have made it without each other that night because I think we were intuitively making decisions which were just in that moment good because the other one was making this decision.

[01:07:23] And so that we were not dying in that night.

[01:07:26] So that we are alive today.

[01:07:27] So I'm very sure that it's just because we were together.

[01:07:32] And we found ourselves on that certain tree, which was the last to grab for eight hours to wait for the water to go down.

[01:07:43] And we were encouraging ourselves during those eight very, very long hours.

[01:07:49] We were not feeling any cold or any – we were not thirsty.

[01:07:55] We were not hungry.

[01:07:56] We were not feeling anything.

[01:07:58] It was – I think we were just full with adrenaline.

[01:08:00] And we stayed there for eight hours before the first firemen could rescue us.

[01:08:08] The catastrophe was so huge in the area that the complete infrastructure was destroyed.

[01:08:16] So it took the rescues so long to enter our area and to come to every house.

[01:08:24] The other people were sitting on their houses, on their roofs.

[01:08:29] It was an extremely and extraordinary situation that we would never want to have again.

[01:08:38] So it was – there was so much pain and so much fear for all the people surrounding us.

[01:08:43] So in our village, 90% of the houses were destroyed by the flood.

[01:08:49] So all the people sitting on their roofs and being afraid of the water and not knowing what the night will bring or if the houses will stay or if they are just taken away, whatever.

[01:09:00] And I think it's still a miracle that the tree where we grabbed, where we stayed, remained so that it was not taken away.

[01:09:11] Because the ground of the valley was full with old trees, hundred-year-old trees.

[01:09:16] They are all gone except for a few.

[01:09:19] And it's such a miracle that we grabbed one of those that remained.

[01:09:24] It was quite an old, very old tree which had extremely deep roots.

[01:09:29] And so we are lucky that it was possible for us to overlive the night on that tree.

[01:09:35] And I'm so grateful that I don't have to go through this night alone.

[01:09:45] Because I don't know – I think I should have panicked that it's too dangerous or whatever.

[01:09:53] And so I'm so grateful that I had the possibility to have this time together with my sister.

[01:10:02] It sounds a bit crazy perhaps, but we started to overthink our restart during that night.

[01:10:10] I think it was something that our brains were just giving us as help.

[01:10:14] So not to think about the situation itself, but to think, okay, do we have an insurance?

[01:10:20] How high is the insurance?

[01:10:22] What is the insurance covering?

[01:10:25] What could all be damaged?

[01:10:26] We saw that our work buildings where we store our bottles and our barriques and stuff like that, that was all gone.

[01:10:35] We saw that all the barriques were swimming away.

[01:10:37] We saw that the machines were swimming, all the big presses, everything.

[01:10:40] We saw ourselves because we've been in the building that everything was swimming away.

[01:10:45] We knew that everything is destroyed.

[01:10:47] And we were just hoping that our families are fine.

[01:10:51] We were talking about that a lot, where they could be, where they could survive, if they are high enough, if there is enough space to the roof.

[01:11:01] With our father, who is also a bit older, if he managed to go up quick enough.

[01:11:07] What is with our children?

[01:11:09] We were thinking about the people that work for us.

[01:11:12] We were thinking about friends.

[01:11:13] We were talking about that a lot.

[01:11:15] But we were talking even more about how we go on, because we knew we are in the middle of the summer, seven to eight weeks to harvest.

[01:11:25] And we knew everything is gone.

[01:11:27] Really, we started to talk about what to do next.

[01:11:31] And I'm also grateful for that, for those talks, so that when we were rescued and we saw the complete disaster,

[01:11:39] we saw the damage, which is all destroyed, but we were directly focused on what to do next.

[01:11:46] So we were rescued from the firemen.

[01:11:49] We were brought to a dry place upside the hill on top of the vineyards.

[01:11:55] And the first thing we did, we were not going to the emergency, to the ambulance, whatever.

[01:12:01] We were not wearing shoes.

[01:12:03] We lost them during swimming.

[01:12:05] I don't know how you can lose shoes, but they were gone.

[01:12:08] We walked on our feet with socks through the vineyards down to the village again.

[01:12:15] We were looking for shoes.

[01:12:16] And then we were looking for shovels and buckets.

[01:12:19] And we directly started to get rid of mud in the house of our parents.

[01:12:24] And we directly started to work.

[01:12:26] And we were not stopping work, I think, sometimes till today.

[01:12:31] And that is something that helped us a lot because we were directly focusing on the future and how to go on.

[01:12:41] We have those times when we cry.

[01:12:44] We had those times and we still have them today.

[01:12:47] Sometimes you think, okay, that was not necessary.

[01:12:49] And how could your life be without all this work you have to do now with rebuilding the vineyard or with rebuilding the area,

[01:12:57] which is today a big construction area.

[01:13:01] We try to focus always on finding the reason.

[01:13:08] We believe that everything happens for a reason.

[01:13:12] And hopefully the reason for us is that we have the possibility to rebuild the binary completely new after our ideas.

[01:13:21] And that is what we hope that we, in a couple of years, we stand there with our new buildings and the winery.

[01:13:31] Yeah, that is how we go through this catastrophe since the 14th of July.

[01:13:41] And the tree that you held for eight hours was a tree that had been planted by your family.

[01:13:46] Yeah, that is a second miracle.

[01:13:48] Not only that the tree is still there, but also that the garden where the tree is located belongs to the family of my grandfather.

[01:13:59] This tree was planted by my grand-grandfather.

[01:14:03] Perhaps he, our grand-grandfather, he planted that tree just for us to grab like 100 years later.

[01:14:10] You don't know.

[01:14:11] So, and that is the small things that you want to keep for yourself for the future to go on.

[01:14:18] The coronavirus pandemic was during this period of time.

[01:14:22] When the flooding happened, everyone was on lockdown and generally separated.

[01:14:28] When the pandemic started, everybody was really insecure how the future will go on, how economics will go on.

[01:14:37] It was really a crazy time, you know.

[01:14:39] You know it yourself.

[01:14:41] But with a catastrophe like that, these pandemics just went into the background.

[01:14:50] Literally from one day to the next.

[01:14:52] For us, it stopped.

[01:14:53] Like it was gone.

[01:14:55] You had to be away from each other, like five meters away from somebody.

[01:15:02] And beginning from the first day, we started to hugging each other again.

[01:15:07] Yeah.

[01:15:07] So your neighbors, just people that you've met on the street coming from your village.

[01:15:12] Normally you're just saying hello, not more.

[01:15:15] You were hugging them and you were sticking together.

[01:15:17] You were sitting together.

[01:15:19] It was necessary to be in a community in that time.

[01:15:22] And also all the people coming to help from other regions.

[01:15:27] And it was like, okay, we have much more problems here than the pandemics.

[01:15:33] In that case, it was really a life danger and so much work to do.

[01:15:39] It was like, okay, we cannot care about any mask or any virus in that moment.

[01:15:46] And, you know, there were so many people coming to help us.

[01:15:51] The first day when you saw this disaster, everything that was destroyed, that the roads were gone,

[01:16:01] the damage was so immense that we started to think about how can we do it.

[01:16:09] The mountain of work was so big that we did not know where to start.

[01:16:16] But in that moment, the first helpers arrived.

[01:16:20] Firstly, those ones just coming by from the surrounding regions,

[01:16:25] bringing us buckets and shovels to do anything because we were not having any.

[01:16:29] Bringing us water, asking, how can I help you?

[01:16:32] Where could I start?

[01:16:33] And another day later, wine growers from the complete wine industry arriving and asking,

[01:16:42] how can we help you?

[01:16:43] So we actually, we literally had no time to panic because there were so many people helping us.

[01:16:51] And that in the middle of the pandemics is some kind of crazy looking backwards

[01:16:56] because everybody was told to stay away and not to come together.

[01:17:02] And from one day to the next, so many people just working and helping.

[01:17:07] And really, we had no time at all to struggle with anything because people just helped.

[01:17:17] That is also something I'm really happy and glad that I could experience this kind of solidarity

[01:17:25] because having experienced that, I have the impression that you are never alone.

[01:17:33] It was incredible to go through this and to experience that.

[01:17:37] And that is something I'm really, really, really glad and extremely grateful about,

[01:17:44] to having experienced that.

[01:17:45] And also that you have yourself a certain force, a certain energy to go through this.

[01:17:56] I'm quite confident that we can do a lot of things, that we can go over our borders or what we think we are able to.

[01:18:07] And in addition that people can stick together so much and being so helpful and full of solidarity,

[01:18:15] that is something I will have for the rest of my life.

[01:18:19] For a period of time, you thought that all the bottles that were owned by the winery were gone?

[01:18:25] Not only the bottled wines, but also the wine that was in Beric's at that time and in casks.

[01:18:32] As everything was destroyed, so we lost nearly the complete vintage 2020, which was in Beric's.

[01:18:40] We lost, for our father, losing his life work, losing all those old wines.

[01:18:46] But it is as it is.

[01:18:49] We have to live with that and we have to identify ourselves again by putting a new stock for the next generation.

[01:18:59] But one of the people that came to help you ended up finding some bottles that were still there.

[01:19:05] Yes, we did not only find bottles.

[01:19:07] We found also nine barrels still full with wine.

[01:19:12] It was like, I don't know, it was like a miracle.

[01:19:16] Of course, we thought everything is gone.

[01:19:19] And yeah, in the first two weeks, it was like nine intact barrels that were found.

[01:19:25] And that was something that also helped us a little bit mentally.

[01:19:29] Yeah, especially mentally.

[01:19:32] We did find wine, but a lot is gone.

[01:19:36] When was it that you were able to have a regular night's sleep?

[01:19:40] Like how long was it?

[01:19:42] I think that was after harvest.

[01:19:45] So because the only financial background that we had were the grapes that were growing outside, everything else was gone.

[01:19:54] We had no building, so we had to make a provisorical building as quick as possible and to get machines and to rent machines.

[01:20:03] And again, colleagues gave us so many things, starting from barrels, from presses, from tanks, from everything just to help us so that we can go through the vintage.

[01:20:15] So this was that time, which was really exhausting.

[01:20:18] Then the vintage coming.

[01:20:21] And normally, like when you start the vintage, you know, there will come a very extremely extraordinary challenging time.

[01:20:29] But for us, it was okay.

[01:20:31] Now vintage starts and we can firstly do things we know about.

[01:20:36] So it was not like we were looking for how we get water, how we get electricity, how we get everything clean, how we get any machines.

[01:20:43] It was like when harvest started, we were really relieved that we can now do something we know.

[01:20:49] And even if we were like very tired and we had really a deficit of energy in that time.

[01:20:58] But then we went through harvest.

[01:21:01] And when that was done, it was being a little bit relieved that the first big thing was done.

[01:21:08] And then started all the insurance stuff and rebuilding stuff.

[01:21:13] And so sometimes also today, it's a bit difficult to sleep very quiet and well.

[01:21:20] But I think we are on a good way.

[01:21:22] And you plan to stay there.

[01:21:24] We directly plan to stay there.

[01:21:27] We never, never ever had the idea of moving away.

[01:21:33] Sometimes I say we are like our vineyards, like our plants, like our wines.

[01:21:38] We have very deep roots and we are rooted in the region.

[01:21:41] It would be even worse moving away to a different place.

[01:21:45] We are so much feeling at home there.

[01:21:47] And we have our wines there.

[01:21:49] We cannot move them as well.

[01:21:51] So it's necessary to stay there.

[01:21:54] Mike A. Nagel has found success and survival by staying close to her family and staying in the R.

[01:21:59] Thank you very much for being here today.

[01:22:00] Thank you.

[01:22:01] Mike A. Nagel of Meier Nagel in the R of Germany.

[01:22:08] All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself, Laby Dalton.

[01:22:12] Aaron Skella has contributed original pieces.

[01:22:15] Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey.

[01:22:19] The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett.

[01:22:23] Show artwork by Alicia Tanoian.

[01:22:26] T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, and so much more, including show stickers, notebooks, and even gift wrap,

[01:23:00] are available for sale if you check the show website.

[01:23:01] Thank you for listening.

[01:23:19] I would like to thank Hilke Delham, Nina Peschel, and Teresa Olkes of the VDP for their help in arranging this interview with Mike A. Nagel.

[01:23:29] I would also point out that the website of the German Wine Collection has more information about the flood that affected Meier Nagel and the R region so severely.

[01:23:39] That website is the gwc.com.

[01:23:44] That's T-H-E-G-W-C dot com.

[01:23:48] And then the Meier Nagel profile page on that website.

[01:23:52] Our kids are quite lucky that they were not feeling that life danger that night.

[01:24:01] They were in a more or less secure place and, yeah, just said, okay, you go to bed.

[01:24:09] It's like nine o'clock in the evening.

[01:24:12] And the kids only saw the disaster in the early morning hours when they woke up again so that they were not seeing us being in that life danger.

[01:24:23] And when they came back, they directly started going back to school and to kindergarten.

[01:24:28] And I think children take new situations much better than adults.

[01:24:36] So I was like, all the time I was like crying and thinking, oh, the children cannot experience the river as it was when I was a child.

[01:24:46] When I was playing there, everything is gone.

[01:24:48] Everything is destroyed.

[01:24:50] But they don't have this experience, so they are not missing it.

[01:24:54] I was thinking, okay, they cannot go to the school, which is just around the corner.

[01:24:59] Now they have to drive with a bus for like half an hour or what.

[01:25:03] And they were saying, okay, this is great.

[01:25:05] I can go with a bus.

[01:25:06] Cool.

[01:25:07] And I don't have to walk by foot.

[01:25:08] Children are looking at changes so differently.

[01:25:12] And we always try not to give them negative things about the flood.

[01:25:20] We are just trying to point out the positives.