A vision lives on

In addition to the external operations, I also took over the cellar work from the start, which Wilfried Jacobus saw more as a duty. I enjoyed that. After I had been here for two years, he said that he could well imagine handing over the winery to my wife and me. For me, this was a far better option than setting up my own business from scratch, constantly running at half throttle and only having second-hand machinery available due to the high costs. It was a real win-win situation for everyone involved. Wilfried Jacobus continues to live on the estate with his family and was able to continue to help organise the business during the transition phase.

Unfortunately, we do not own the entire Steyerberg. The site covers around 60 hectares, we own 40 of them, 16 planted with vines. That is already a large part of the area. But there are still smaller areas that lie fallow or are now wooded. Hardly anyone actually knows who owns them. In some cases, it is very difficult to identify the owners. However, we have been able to acquire a few more plots in recent years. Because we now really have the majority of the site and there are no longer any larger plots in one piece, we are probably the only buyers for the remainder. I certainly hope that we will be able to acquire the plots that are interesting for viticulture in the next 20 years.

In fact, these are mostly areas that have not seen a vine for 40 years. We only have two conventionally working neighbours who still cultivate vines, especially here in the flat areas on the heights. In the steep part, on the south side of the Steyerberg, we have all our vineyards in one piece without any conventionally working neighbours. That is very good. I hope that at some point we will be able to complete the rounding off. 40 hectares of vineyards in one piece would be a real house number. However, we also want to create ecological retreat areas so that certain areas remain uncultivated.

For me, it is very important not only to own vineyards, produce wine and sell it at a profit, but also to really emphasise the terroir of the Steyerberg. In my opinion, this is only possible with a coherent area and a holistic view of the landscape, which, in addition to the purely viticultural aspect, also places more emphasis on the care of the cultural landscape and does not end at the vineyard boundaries.

What the Jacobus family has created here is truly remarkable: an agricultural business of this size run by just two people, without an investor pumping money into it in the background. The winery used to be located in the neighboring village. At some point, Wilfried and Marlene Jacobus made the decision to concentrate on the Steyerberg. They then sold their vineyards in the other villages and swapped flat vineyards, even those with very good soils, for steep vineyards in the Steyerberg. Nobody in the village understood this. In 1999, they moved to Steyerberg and laid the foundations for what I can build on today.

That really is a sticking point. Fortunately, we do not have any terraces and the senior still helps out a little. In the past, when he had to do everything on his own, things inevitably got left undone from time to time, which would be unthinkable in a conventional winery in Rhinehessen, where the flat vineyards always have to look immaculate.

In the meantime, we have made significant technical improvements. Over the past ten years, many machines have been developed that can also be used on steep slopes. That means enormous progress. Today, I only need three days to do the work that used to take me 14 days formerly.

The advantage for us is that we do not have to factor in travelling times. My furthest vineyard is only 300 metres away from the house. If my mulcher breaks down in the last row, I drive home, fix it and am back in three minutes. That is quite different from having to drive here from a neighbouring village to mow my vineyard and then it breaks down in the last row. I would have to drive half an hour and would need another half an hour to get back to the vineyard.

Yes, exactly. Just by rounding off our 16 hectares of vineyards, we need surprisingly few working hours and achieve a high level of efficiency.

We only use our own names for the vineyards now. We had a few vineyards registered, but as we now produce almost exclusively Landweine, we had to part with them for legal reasons. Our vineyard names are more or less fantasy terms that originate from the region.

We only differentiate between vineyards if they are significantly different from other vineyards. If they are so special that individual vinification and separate bottling make sense.

Of course, all Steyerberg wines are first and foremost typical of the Steyerberg, namely typical of the green slate soil, which produces a high minerality and a certain saltiness in the wines. Nevertheless, it is astonishing to see the differences between the Riesling Langegohn and the Riesling Alte Reben, for example. The Langegohn is now a young field, previously the Alte Reben came from there. The Langegohn is very steep, the Steyerberg turns to the west and the slate lies there without a soil layer. This results in a Riesling which is very different to one from the eastern part of the site.

Opposite the Steyerberg is a forest, which would lead to a certain amount of moisture in the valley if the slope were not open to the west. Windesheim lies in front of the Steyerberg in a relatively round valley where several streams flow together. This is where the air is drawn from the mountain. So strong thermals are created, which are very good for drying the grapes and also for the night temperatures in autumn. We have extremely low fungal pressure, perfect for organic viticulture. Compared to Bingen, which is only ten kilometres away, the vegetation is always a good two weeks behind due to our location at an altitude of 250 metres.

Due to the aforementioned thermals, we have rapidly falling temperatures on autumn nights. It therefore makes a huge difference to the wines whether the Riesling is grown in the western part of the Steyerberg or in the south-eastern part, which is more sheltered from the wind. Because we have 16 hectares in one piece, the differences within the Steyerberg are clearly noticeable. It would be very surprising if there were no differences within a site that runs from east to south to west.

I do not know if it is exactly the same green slate. An old geological map shows it as such for the Steyerberg. There is also said to be some in Niederhausen. However, I have a customer, a geologist, who doubts that there is any green slate at all at the Nahe, because it can only form under extremely high pressure and at a very high temperature, even for slate. It is a very hard slate, as we know it from Moselle slate or black slate. Although it also has layers, it is more warped and not as straight. It weathers very quickly as soon as it comes into contact with air or something else.

This is currently a hot topic. We have already hacked out more Piwis than others have ever planted. In the case of Regent, which is no longer really a Piwi variety, we were one of the first to plant it on a large scale. Today I still have just under two hectares, but I will gradually reduce it. Overall, we have invested a lot of money and learnt a lot. We have 34 ares of Cabernet Blanc. That is not a huge amount, but it is enough.

Personally, I have a few problems with the Piwis. For me, selected yeast is already an additive. Apart from sulphites, I do not use anything in the cellar and expect my musts to ferment spontaneously and relatively stably. I know enough about chemistry to be able to judge what ferments stably and what does not. I know what I can trust and what I cannot. I can judge the acidity, pH value and biochemical stability of a must quite well. If I get wonderful Cabernet Blanc grapes into the cellar and have a fermentation stop at 60 grams of residual sugar three years in a row, then I ask myself whether a lot of research is still needed with the Piwis to show me how I can achieve a stable fermentation without a thousand little aids and selected yeast in the cellar. In the meantime, I am doing a mash fermentation with the Cabernet Blanc. It ferments relatively quickly this way, but it develops a rather intense paprika-pepper-chilli flavour. A great accompaniment to food, almost the best thing to go with tapas or grilled vegetables. But it is no longer easy-drinking because this flavour is extremely dominant. I think to myself: I would rather have a Riesling I can work with and that develops over hours and days. That is excitement! That is terroir and origin! The Riesling offers significantly more facets than any Piwi I have ever tasted.

On average, I need less than one kilogramme of copper per year. Even in a difficult year like 2021, when I did not make 32 trips and still had relatively low losses due to peronospora. I only carried out a total of 12 sprayings – which is within a completely normal range – and had no losses at all in Riesling, Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. But I had the losses with Regent and Cabernet Blanc.

So why I should not use soil structure (humus) and the classic grape varieties that we have, which reflect the terroir every year, to achieve greater resilience against fungi and the consequences of climate change, instead of creating another summer cuvée in which I place the Piwis and which I sell wholesale for € 5.20 retail price? Where I then have to start with minimal pruning and trellising to make the whole thing worthwhile. It really cannot be the solution or the salvation of viticulture to reduce costs even further by focussing on grape varieties that are completely uncomplicated to grow, but never come close to the quality of a Riesling or Pinot Noir.

Clones that ripen later could counteract this somewhat. However, there are so many other factors in viticulture that we should tweak first before we try to go through 1000 years of vine breeding within 60 years. If everyone has his own ideas about what we actually need, it will be difficult to crystallise clear breeding goals. We cannot simply breed vines just for the Nahe, just for Rheinhessen or just for the Rheingau. We need universal planting material in large numbers for the whole of Germany. Grape varieties that work everywhere, from the Ahr to southern Baden, or even in northern Lower Saxony, so that we can also plant the rest of Germany.

However, if we did not have more clones but mass selections with a greater variety of the same grape variety in a vineyard, we would strengthen the resilience to drought and to extremely hot and cold years more than if we now plant Cabernet Blanc at all costs, even though it is one of the most exciting Piwis and can be very unique. I believe that we should first try to manage at least the next 50 years well using methods that we know but have not applied in the past 60 or 80 years. Nobody knows what will happen after that anyway. Based on what has happened in the past 20 years alone, it is impossible to make any serious predictions about what we will have to do to be able to grow wine here in 50 years' time.

We have planted several mass selections of Pinot Noir, mainly French, consisting of eight different clones from Burgundy. They give me more stability in the vineyard and greater resistance to the cherry vinegar fly and pests, some of which we did not even know about in the past. Apart from that, I still have ancient Ritter clones, because Professor Fritz Ritter once worked in the winery. In the past, these clones were propagated and planted as great new varieties. If I compare today, a 20-year-old plant is better than a 50-year-old one with a Ritter clone. So there is certainly still room for improvement.

What is more, we still have the same foliage height in Germany today as in 1970, so why cannot we make the stickles – when there is already too much sugar in the grapes on 10 August – 20 centimetres shorter? I work with significantly shorter foliage walls than usual, so that growth, sugar production and therefore also ripening are delayed. This extends the vegetation period a little. More leaves mean more photosynthesis and more stored sugar. My annual average for Frühburgunder is now 6 September. Then it has 12 per cent alcohol by volume and seven to eight grams of acidity. Others reach these values on 2 August. To be fair, of course, I also have to say that we have the advantage of a cool location. But we only harvest 2200 litres of Frühburgunder per hectare. In Rhinehessen, people would ask: Yes, but where did the other 7500 litres go? You simply have to accept that a vineyard that is supposed to work cannot produce 8000 litres. When I look at yield figures from 1900 or 1870, they were just 2500 litres, maybe 4000 litres in good years. I am not saying that we now necessarily have to go back to these quantities. But if we are talking about stable vineyards and want to cultivate them sustainably, we cannot scrub 7500 litres from the hectare every year, throw the quantity on the market as a fruity summer wine and think we will win a flower pot with it. However, 2200 litres fits in quite well with changing consumer behaviour. Better one bottle less, but a good one.

These dense plantings have become a bit fashionable recently. There are two dimensions. I can choose a shorter spacing within the rows, which actually reduces the vine's load. I am a big fan of that. We have a spacing of 50 to 70 centimetres. We use Cordon, but the rod is then only 50 centimetres long. However, I do not think much of narrow lanes. Narrow lanes lead to narrow machines, which are either expensive, no longer state of the art due to their very narrow tyres, or put a lot of pressure on the ground. We cannot implement that.

I see little sense in Gobelet. If I have more air between the soil and the fruit rod or foliage wall, then I also have less fungal pressure. The fact that some colleagues prune a trunk 40 centimetres high just so that it looks Burgundian afterwards, but the vines still have to have a 1.20 metre long foliage wall and the row width is also only 1.20 metres, makes no sense. It leads to compaction and prevents air circulation.

In principle, dense planting makes a lot of sense in order to relieve the strain on the vines in the future. I am also glad that I can still react well to the vintage by breaking out the cordon. In a dry spring – because I have more shoots and not just one fruit rod – I can reduce the number of shoots per vine by breaking them out without damaging anything. But as I said, I do not think much of the narrow lanes, not least because tilling and soil enrichment to obtain humus are extremely time-consuming.

That is for sure. We have been working biodynamically for 35 years now. That puts us among the top five in Germany in viticulture. We had to push many vineyards that were previously cultivated conventionally so that we could work them. Pushing with a caterpillar is of course a disaster for the soil structure. But we went from a very low humus content of less than one, sometimes less than half a per cent to three, four, sometimes even five per cent after ten years, which is a lot and, to be honest, almost too much for me personally. But the soil absorbs a lot of water as a result and the water stays where it should. In 2018, we had three days of thunderstorms at the end of July after a long dry spell. That was enough to supply the vineyards. However, these thunderstorms could have led to extreme erosion if the humus content and soil quality had been poorer. I had three young fields of 0.7 hectares each, which were particularly at risk. That could have gone really wrong after such a long dry period.

By the way, the 2018 vintage was an eye-opener for me. When I started here, I had very little theoretical knowledge. I did not grow up in a Rudolf Steiner environment, and I did not go to a Waldorf school either. I came to biodynamic viticulture because of the quality, not out of ideological conviction. In 2018, I was pretty frustrated because I felt that our vineyards reacted to the drought earlier with growth delays and slight yellowing than our conventionally working neighbors. When you do so much work, you naturally expect the vines to be more resilient and to react later. We then used horn silica. Two to three weeks after the horn silica application, our vineyards had recovered and our neighbors' vineyards had literally collapsed. In retrospect, it has become clear to me that the fact that our vines took a break first speaks for a higher resilience. The early reaction instead of excessive growth, which means that the leaves and grapes can no longer be adequately supplied by the vine – which was also observed in some vineyards in 2022 – led to a much more relaxed situation in the vineyards.

We are not only members of Demeter, but also of Ecovin. Soil structure, soil cultivation and compost are very important topics there. In the neighboring village there is a very committed Ecovin winery that works a lot with compost tea. I often attend training courses there that are organized by the colleagues. It is fascinating that the state of scientific research on topics such as soil structure, soil and plant repair or strengthening the resilience of soils and plants is gradually getting to where biodynamicists have been for 100 years. Horn manure and compost tea have very similar basic ideas. There are some differences, but the two preparations are very similar. The horn manure preparation is made differently and there is a different explanation for its effect. But in principle it is compost that I stir in warm water to activate the microorganisms it contains. I activate the information contained in it, spread it in the vineyards or other areas and pass the information on.

Biodynamicists have been doing this for 100 years. But sometimes it is made out as if it is unscientific and difficult to understand. If you want to understand the theoretical basis, then it is undoubtedly so. But if we simply look at the effect visible in the vineyards, it is anything but witchcraft. It is not that you cannot understand why it works. The question is whether you want to understand it. It may look like homeopathy. But let us do the math. If we use 250 litres of water per hectare with a total of 100 grams of copper for classic biological plant protection, then, broken down to the square meter, that is also very little. With horn manure we use 40 litres of water and 80 grams of manure. That is certainly not homeopathy. We do not have to put 5000 litres of water into the vineyard to achieve an effect or to pass on information.

Biodynamicists like to talk about information. The idea behind this is a kind of inoculation. You give it a boost, you throw something down, and then it can continue to grow. It is not dead material that we are spreading. The microbial process that takes place in a cow's horn under good conditions produces humus, i. e. perfect soil. I am spreading something that the soil needs. The soil needs this information because it has it no longer. The information has been lost over 60 years of conventional farming. That is why we have to return it to the soil. We do this much more efficiently than before. Originally it were ruminants that constantly generated the information.

If I spread selected microorganisms today, they do not necessarily suit my soil. I cannot throw the same microbiome onto slate, loess or limestone and expect the soil is able to deal with it. That is why the farm-specific organism is the most efficient means of repairing soil.

Ideally, a biodynamic preparation is made on your own farm. It needs a certain amount of time to mature. The preparation should be stored on the land where it will later be applied. There it matures in the same soil environment, under the same climatic conditions and at the same pH values. Weather conditions and soil moisture differ from hill to hill. Ideally, the preparation should come from your own animals, which eat the farm's own grass and excrete it where they live. Of course, this is not always possible, but I am talking about the optimum here. The self-made preparation is more useful and efficient than if I take a preparation from someone in Baden-Wurttemberg that has matured in loess, where the microbes find different conditions than on my slate soil. As I said, that is the optimum. It is still better to buy a preparation from somewhere else than not to use one at all because you do not have any cows yourself.

We are currently working with a farmer in the neighboring village who keeps Galloway cattle. Not so much for professional reasons, but more as a hobby. I currently get my cow manure from him. In the future, we are planning to buy Harzer Höhenvieh cattle. This is a relatively small, very extensive breed of cattle that copes well on steep slopes. We are currently checking the legal regulations and finding out what fences we need.

We once had a working relationship with a traveling shepherd who walked through the vineyards with his herd in the spring. Unfortunately, he is no longer here. It is possible that we will do something here too. But for now, we are just seeing how far we can get with the cattle, because they are a better supplier of manure.

Like a cook. I have great products, so I do not have to add salt. If it were that easy! In fact, I think the opposite is true. If I work very close to nature in the vineyard, I get a lot of nature in the cellar with the grapes. I have to taste and check a wine that has the potential to be great more often in the cellar than another. I cannot just put it in the cellar in the hope that evertyhing will be fine. Admitting this has unfortunately become uncommon today. Many people do not want to admit that the risk is greater when it comes to something more special or individual. If I do not want to play it safe – that means clarifying the must with gelatine, then running it through a flotation system, adding two grams of tartaric acid and selected yeast, and then adding 50 milligrams of sulphur – I have to stay extremely close. When you work close to nature, you never know exactly which yeast will prevail.

I do not know in advance how reliably the Riesling Alte Reben will ferment and whether the yeast strain will ferment the first 200 grams of sugar within two or three weeks like it does in the textbook, or whether it will say ten grams before the end: now I will stop and add a little more lactic acid. So I cannot say that I do not have to do anything else in the cellar just because the grapes were great.

What often helps me is to leave and come back after a week. That might seem a little strange. But if, for example, a sulphurous off-flavour develops or a wine does not develop in the direction I want, it is usually best not to get hectic and wait a few days. Since I leave all wines on the full lees, they go through autolysis. The yeast then gets into metabolic processes that do not really produce what I want. Most of the time it is best to stir up the yeast, especially at the edges of the tanks. If I then keep these edges moving during batonnage or stirring and thereby bring a little life back into them – even a little air if necessary – then I stabilize the wines with it. If it is not a real sulphurous off-flavour but just a reduction, I can always get it under control with oxygen. Otherwise the yeast has to get moving with the wine. I really have to stay on top of things and also know my biochemistry in the cellar.

My last resort – which I very rarely do – is to separate the wine from the mother yeast and carry out a yeast fining. I add five liters of yeast from another tank with Riesling. Riesling yeast is always relatively stable. It is quite amazing what a yeast fining like this can do for the aromas of the wine without a single bag being opened.

2020 and 2022 were not the best years for fermentation. It was too dry, the vineyards were not optimally supplied and were under too much stress. I did not sleep well anyway because of my three little children, and then in those two years I had several tanks, which were not conducive to a deep, healthy sleep. I once pumped a wine that stopped fermenting at ten grams of sugar from a height of five meters into a tank that I put outside. This gave the wine so much air that it started fermenting again three days later and went through to three grams. This is not a textbook method, of course, but it works. This way I do not get a primarily fruity Pinot Blanc that smells of peach and tastes of apple, but a wine with a lot of structure, with a mouthfeel and no frills.

Yes. There is a story behind that. Nearby, in Bad Sobernheim, there is the Biohotel Menschel, with which we have been working for a long time. We have a very friendly relationship with the employees. On a company outing here, they planted the Frühburgunder vineyard, which we called “the Menschel” from then on.

Frühburgunder is an important topic for us. We have three small plots right on the farm, almost next to each other, but of very different ages. The youngest plot was planted in 2021. We expect the maiden harvest this autumn. Then there is a 15 and a 25 year old vineyard. Our Frühburgunder actually turns out very well. We rarely have more than 12.5 percent alcohol. In cool years like 2021, Frühburgunder is the better Pinot. In warm years it produces wines that can be stored, even if they are – to put it kindly – quite spicy and edgy when young. After three to five years, however, they begin to open up and become soft.

We have not been sulphuring the Frühburgunder for four years. That is of course nice. In 2023, however, we had to discard 40 percent of the yield because the coloring was too early. But it was not just the Frühburgunder, we also had to sort out a lot of the Pinot Gris. Without hand-picking, you have no chance with the Frühburgunder, the variety is too vulnerable for that. It works for us because we have a cool location. I have never harvested it with less than 7.5 grams of acid.

Individuality. A supposedly great wine that everyone likes is not a great wine for me. Something that everyone likes cannot be great. It has to have a few rough edges. It has to be a specialty that clearly reflects the terroir or at least the winemaker's signature. I have to be able to remember it even after three weeks, otherwise it is not a great wine for me. A great wine does not always have to be the one that I find fantastic.

To name one wine that I think is great: Breuer’s Schlossberg. I had it from two vintages, one of which was 2003. Those were two wines that were very great for me. Not because they were necessarily charming or perfectly matured Rieslings, but because they simply reflected the location, origin and also the cellar incredibly well. The wooden barrels that are cleaned before being filled already smell of Breuer wines. I will never forget that.

When I started here in 2017, I had a natural Silvaner wine from Steyerberg, unfiltered, with no added sulphur. It must have been 2019 when I tried it. It had just a thumbnail's worth of yeast deposits. Not like you do with natural wines today, as cloudy as possible, with two fingers' breadth of yeast left. The wine was fresh, not aged at all. For me, that was spectacular. You do nothing and it works. The Silvaner was undoubtedly not everybody's darling and did not exude a lot of drinking pleasure. But it was a wine that stayed in my memory for an extremely long time.

In the future, I do not just want to make market-oriented wines that everyone likes as much as possible. I want to continue the path we have been on for a long time and cultivate a customer base that understands and supports our way of making wine. Individuality before authenticity before mainstream.