With backgrounds in Jewish studies and philosophy Melanie and Michael worked for science publishers in Germany and the UK for several years before going back to the family-winery founded in 1843. With the 2013 vintage 2Naturkinder was born.
Fascinated by the purism of the wines we discovered the years before as consumers, we were driven by the idea of producing the purest wine possible. A wine full of life, not expectations. Expressing the land, the vintage, the people and varieties in a way our region hadn’t seen before.
From the vineyard to the cellar countless microorganisms are part of a wine’s life story. Living in the cosmos, surrounding the vines; in the soil, grapes, juice and finally the wine.
We’re also part of that story but it’s not just us writing it. We allow for rambunctiousness. For the ever-changing, incredibly complex being that ends up as wine in a bottle to be more than a resource, a product, to really be alive.
Less control means there is a bigger risk to fail. But also allows for unpredictable beauty and enables moments of true resonance.
With nature, wine and the world.
Wines
All our grapes come from organically farmed vineyards and are hand-picked. The juice becomes wine just by itself, we don’t need or use any additives. In 2023 we started introducing a new label design so for the foreseeable future it’s going to be a colorful mix in our portfolio.
I fear so deeply the words of mankind.They utter them all with so certain a sound:and this we call house and that we call hound,and here is before, and there is behind.
I fear too their thinking, their mocking disdain.They know the whole past, all things that will be.For them, no mountain is wondrous to see;their properties border on God’s own domain.
Pay heed to my warning: now make your retreat.The singing of things, not words, is what’s sweet.Your words make things mute, so rigid and gray,killing them, draining their beauty away.
Rainer-Maria Rilke
Land
We farm about seven hectares of land, mostly close to the winery on the hills of two little valleys. A long journey brought us to understand soil less parametrically but more as a living being. Remaining small and keeping wines from all the plots separately in the cellar we started to understand how treating soil differently impacts the wine.
Once the grapes are ripening, the symphony is written and waiting to be performed.
Depending on their needs the plots are farmed individually: Fine compost if the soil is lacking balance, compost tea and a very low tilling to increase the amount of humus. Diverse greening, viti-forestry projects and homemade brews to minimize the amount of copper needed to deal with downy mildew. Not only to provide the plants the best possible ecosystem but to preserve our soils for the generations to come.
Farming is composing. The climate and micro-climate, the bedrock- and topsoil, the variety and the yield, all of this and only this defines the potential we later have in the cellar. Once the grapes are ripening the symphony is written and waiting to be performed.
Cellar
Starting with the perfect picking date a lot of decisions define the final character of the wine: destemming, maceration, skin-fermentation, sedimentation, the choice of a vessel. It’s the interpretation of the symphony written in the vineyard played by an orchestra of flavors. Each decision made during the vinification process makes one of the staging musicians aka flavor a little more or less prominent.
Dealing with, embracing the unexpected is a key challenge making truly natural wine.
We don’t use any additives including sulfites at any stage of the winemaking which gives us the most direct feedback we can possibly get from our land. But it also allows for unpredictable developments. Dealing with, embracing the unexpected is a key challenge making truly natural wine.
Our wines age in our old cellar for at least one year, often longer. Mostly in oak, from used barriques to big, proper barrels. Each time we taste a barrel we think of the vineyard, what went well this year, what could be better next year. Wines remain connected to the vines, the cellar linked to the land.
Nature is not simply an organic body, like a clock, which has no vital principle of motion in it; but it is a living body which has life and perception, which are much more exalted than a mere mechanism or a mechanical motion.
Anne Conway
