Faults

1. Two hectares, one contract fewer

   The batch that triggered it all

   In 2014 we were still farming conventionally. A contaminated batch of a fungicide killed off the shoot tips on around two hectares. Growth: stopped. Yield: lost. The manufacturer compensated for the damage. What remained was the question: what are we actually spraying? Our answer was to convert to organic.

   The best advert for organic came from a fungicide manufacturer.

2. The first organic year

   The baking soda

   In the first organic year, the classic mix: sulphur, copper, orange oil and potassium bicarbonate, basically baking soda. That kept the fungi under control. Not the leaves: the combination was simply too harsh for the Thermenregion.

   Natural doesn't mean gentle. After one year, the baking soda was out again.

3. Six years with the wrong equipment

   The old sprayer

   Organic products don't penetrate the leaf, they sit on top of it. So coverage decides everything. And for the first few years we drove an ancient sprayer that couldn't do exactly that.

   We changed the product, the variety, the timing. The equipment last.

4. Only noticed late

   The destemmer that cracked the seeds

   Our destemmer worked with a classic drum and went about it roughly. It cracked open some of the seeds. What passes from a cracked seed into the wine, nobody wants in there.

   Replaced by a machine that plucks the berries instead of threshing them. Could have been noticed earlier.

5. One cold room too few

   The summer without cooling

   A very hot year and we had only one cold room. Harvested grapes came in at 25 to 30 degrees. You can't bring that down fast enough in a single room. The musts started to ferment, the carbon dioxide lifted the sediment and the wine never cleared.

   Since 2019 a tube heat exchanger chills the mash directly to below 15 degrees. A problem you buy your way out of instead of solving, just the other way round.

6. Again and again, over the years

   The aroma yeasts

   More aroma, more fruit: the temptation was the same every time. So we tried it. Fermentation ran less smoothly, problems arose that hadn't existed before. And what ended up in the glass tasted of the yeast instead of the vineyard.

   After that, back to neutral yeast. And a few years later, from the start again. That's the mistake we made most often.

7. Three years of theory

   The low-wound pruning method

   Great on paper, and we still stand behind it today. It took me three or four years to really understand the system. But you can't prune 25 hectares alone. And what you can barely explain yourself, you can't teach anyone.

   A method that only works if one person can do it doesn't work.

8. Four years fine, then not anymore

   The whole berries

   For red wine, let every berry start fermenting on its own, no pump, just gravity into the tank. That worked so well for a few years that we stopped paying attention. Then residual sugar was left after pressing. Too little to taste, enough to tip things the wrong way in the barrique. Result: more volatile acidity.

   The mistake wasn't the attempt itself, but that at some point we considered it done.

9. Twenty years of counter-testing

   The Cork

   Since 2003 we have bottled the same batch twice, half cork, half screw cap, then tasted them blind against each other. The screw cap won in roughly 95 cases out of 100. We carried on bottling under cork all the same: for red wine until 2021, for natural wine until 2023.

   We had the answer for twenty years. We only believed it much later.

10. Every year anew

    Plant protection

    Eleven organic years, eleven different spray schedules. In none of them did everything fit. Sometimes the nutrition, sometimes the timing, sometimes a product that did more harm than good.

    Strictly speaking, every single year belongs on this page. That’s exactly why we’re good at it today.

We publish the list because a business that shows no mistakes is only hiding them better.