When making a career change from working as a surgeon, basic manual skills and the transfer of intuitive knowledge to the phytosanitary problems of viticulture were helpful. I learnt the theoretical basics of viticulture and olive growing via a self-taught approach by studying books, current scientific publications and the internet in general.
Precision, care and perseverance as well as the responsible and respectful treatment of living things characterise the surgical aspect of my work on vines and olive trees.
‘All the work in the vineyards and olive groves throughout the year is carried out manually and exclusively by myself.
This ensures a consistent and high quality standard in the execution of the various work steps. I carry out the workload without any support from paid labour, which means I remain independent.’
The objective was to establish a concept that enables the production of high-quality grapes and olives in a system that brings nature/culture/human beings closer to a new balance under aspects of sustainability and biodiversity - as ‘minimally invasive wine and olive cultivation’ that supports and heals the local biome and affects it as little as possible.
This includes, on the one hand, preserving and cultivating the old cultural landscape of the terraced steep-slope soils with their narrow vine alleys and, on the other hand, a sustainable refocus on healing and preserving the old vines through ‘phyto-surgical’ measures and ‘physiological’ pruning, also as a revitalisation of the qualitative manual viticultural tradition. Cultivation is characterised, among other things, by a minimal carbon footprint without the use of fossil fuels, and an integral part of this is the avoidance of synthetic herbicides, insecticides or fungicides, in particular the application of copper.
‘The concept of growth is placed here in a new context of a positive relationship between nature and culture, plants, animals and humans in the sense of a harmony of balanced, respectful interaction.’
A ‘biome’ is a regional ecosystem that has a certain combination of plants, animals, microorganisms and inanimate environmental features that often reflect certain climate and soil conditions. If nature is given space again, it finds its way and begins to regenerate in a short space of time. Protecting and sustainably stabilising biodiversity under certain environmental conditions as a comprehensive biome - of which humans are also a part - means enriching nature instead of clearing land.
‘The holistic approach that comes into play in this overall concept enables people to resonate with nature and to make themselves worthy of it again through respectful interaction. This is favourably accompanied by a change in our culturally conditioned, artificial perception of duality through the separation of man and nature to a return to a state of the entity as a holistic, spiritual whole.’