How did I actually get into winemaking?
Johann Jakob Joachim (born 1713) already owned a farm in Mörzheim. Winegrowing was already part of a family business in the region back then. My father reorganised the business in the 1970s. He converted the previous mixed operation of viticulture, arable farming and livestock farming into a pure wine-growing operation.
My parents, Margit and Richard, ran the winery in the family tradition until 2003. My brother Thomas and I moved away from the Palatinate to study in the 1990s. This interrupted the family tradition for a while. I moved to Berlin in 1998 to work as a graphic designer. In 2013, a small vineyard that my father continued to cultivate became the starting point for making a wine according to my ideas.
It was clear to me that I could only continue winegrowing if I switched to organic viticulture. Since 2013, I have therefore done without fungicides, herbicides and artificial fertilisers and work according to the guidelines of organic viticulture.
In order to get only healthy and ripe grapes, we select them in the vineyard before and during the harvest. In the cellar, I work on ‘natural’ vinification, the wines are unfined, unfiltered and only minimally sulphurised. This results in wines that are characterised by a natural and vintage-typical independence.
