Soil

Pure gravel

We're located in the Steinfeld, which means: gravel, as far down as you dig. A soil that holds almost no water, naturally has little humus, and whose surface is mostly covered with fist-sized stones. Where a stone lies, nothing grows.

For us, building humus isn't an improvement — it's the basic precondition. Everything that follows serves this one goal.

Whole-area composting, twice a year

Twice a year we let a cover crop stand, then work it into the soil and sprinkle it with ferments. What happens next is microbiological decomposition — not rotting, but a controlled fermentation process that gets the soil life going. And it's the soil life that builds humus.

On gravel, that's a discipline of its own. Getting any decomposition going at all with so little growth is quite different from doing so on a naturally developed soil — and we're far from finished with it.

Always green

For us, every row is covered in green, all year round.

A cover crop stays in place for eighteen months. Our over-the-row technology makes this possible: because we have equipment that works across the row — such as the over-the-row sprayer — we don't have to drive down every lane. We alternate each year, driving one row one year and the other the next. That way the freshly sown cover crop can stay undisturbed.

This is crucial for our mixtures, because they need time.

What we sow — and what we don't

No grasses. Grass doesn't root deep enough and needs too much water; on gravel, it's the wrong partner.

Instead, a colourful organic vineyard cover crop mixture:

Oil flax · Gold-of-pleasure · Cress · Phacelia · Buckwheat · Red clover · White clover · Bokhara clover · Sainfoin · Bird's-foot trefoil · Crimson clover · Crown sweet clover · Persian clover · Alexandrian clover · Bee pasture

We also mix in bristle oat, sorghum and Pannonian winter vetch.

The high proportion of legumes is deliberate: through their root nodules they fix nitrogen from the air and release it into the soil. In a sense, we fertilise from the air.

No herbicides

Glyphosate has no place on our soils. We don't use other herbicides either. What grows between the vines we keep in check mechanically or with mulch.

One piece of equipment that's standard elsewhere doesn't work for us: a rotary tiller breaks after a single row on gravel. Much of what's written in textbooks simply doesn't work here.

Why it's worth it

Little grows in the Steinfeld. Viticulture is one of the few uses that can still withstand this dryness — and when the inter-rows are permanently covered in green and never worked, one of the most species-rich areas in the region emerges there.

So a soil on which almost nothing grows becomes an area that supports insects.