Viticulture with heart
A small winery in Meersburg is one of the most successful private wineries on Lake Constance. It owes its uniqueness to hand harvesting and the "fastest winemaker in Germany".
Wednesday. 7:55 a.m. Geiger Winery. In a small town above Meersburg on Lake Constance. Eleven harvest workers are standing on the farm of Thomas "Edi" Geiger. "Two buses should be enough," says Andreas Graf, one of the four permanent employees at the farm. Then they drive off in white vans, down the road and into the vineyards of Riedetsweiler, five minutes away.
"Everyone takes a bucket, scissors and gloves," says Andreas. Everyone gathers in front of the rows of vines. "An experienced reader and a beginner share a row - one side each," the 55-year-old explains. Only the good grapes go into the buckets; the rotten or moldy grapes that smell of vinegar are scraped out by hand with the scissors.
Whether the grapes are more or less rotten depends on the weather. The best climate for growing grapes is a mild summer and not too much rain. "Dry, warm days two weeks before harvest are best, so the grapes get more sweetness," says Markus, a harvest helper from East Frisia who has lived with Edi on the farm for seven years. The more sun the grapes get, the sweeter the taste. "The grapes had better not have a hundred Oechsle - the boss doesn't want that," says the 36-year-old. In winegrowers' parlance, the Oechsle grade indicates the sugar concentration contained in the grapes. This provides information about the subsequent alcohol content of the wine.
Müller-Thurgau, a white grape variety typical of Lake Constance, is harvested first. It was first bred in 1882 by Dr. Hermann Müller from the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. In the past, Müller-Thurgau had the reputation of being an undemanding mass-produced wine. Today it is a high-quality wine, which almost all winegrowers in the Lake Constance region cultivate. The grapes taste sweet, but you should not eat too many of them. Even when you cut them, you can smell the fermentation of individual grapes - a sour smell that gets deep into your nose.
The grapes are cut off at a piece rate and thrown into the buckets; it has to be done quickly. Again and again Markus and the second Andreas, a 45-year-old guest worker from Poland, shout: "Buckets!" These are passed under the vines and emptied into a large white box on a tractor that stands between the rows. Once a row is finished, they check again to make sure no grapes have been forgotten.
Edi pays his helpers above average - twelve euros an hour - he knows that it's not easy to find people these days. "We don't do it for the money, but because we enjoy it," agree two women in their late forties from the region. Seasonal worker Thomas from Ravensburg and employee Janka from Croatia, the "good soul" on the farm, also help with the grape harvest.
Here everything is done by hand. Many other wineries harvest their wine with the help of machines called "full harvesters". With this, all the grapes are harvested, even the bad ones. They are then filtered later, again by machines. "But never as thoroughly as before when the grapes are harvested by hand," says Thomas.
When to harvest is always decided by the winemaker himself. As a rule, usually from the end of September to the end of October. "This will be a good vintage, the summer was not as hot as last year," says the Polish Andreas, before declaring the harvest of Müller-Thurgau finished.
Now it is the turn of the Pinot Gris, in it is the Ruländer, a red-green grape variety. In a very short time, Pinot Gris has become a white wine of the upper class. The grapes on these vines are much firmer than those of Müller-Thurgau and hardly rot. Harvesting is easy, whole grape stems can be cut off. The buckets fill up quickly and the monotonous work takes on something meditative. The helpers talk about life, the birds chirp and the sun shines through the large clouds again and again. It is a mild, pleasant autumn day. "The wind is really pulling through my bones," says Janka.
This does not harm the vines, only hail and violent storms put an entire year's harvest at risk. "For us, the grape harvest is the freestyle," says seasonal worker Thomas. The really hard work takes place throughout the summer, he says. "We must go through all the vines twenty times, re-trimming canes, pruning away branches and leaves so that the grapes get enough light and sun," he says. With four hectares of vines and two and a half hectares of fruit, that's quite a lot, even though it makes the Geiger winery one of the smaller ones in Germany.
Lunch break. Sticky, tired and now already with pain in the back due to the constant bending, we return to the farm after four hours in the vineyards. There, Edi is waiting with his usual broad grin on his face and moves the crates of harvested grapes around with the forklift. He pours the grapes into a 50,000-euro machine that separates the grapes from the branches. This crushes the grapes and creates mash, a sticky mass of juice. "Before that, I put a bit of charcoal on it, which takes out the aroma of the rotten grapes," Edi says. The "scraping out" during the harvest pays off later, he adds. "You can't make good juice from rotten grapes," he says.
The 55-year-old does not produce wines for the masses. He sells them in his own Meersburg farm store on Stettener Straße and on his farm. They are delivered to star restaurants and romantic hotels in the Lake Constance region and on request. "We are usually completely sold out by Christmas," says Edi.
The winery needs three additional pillars - farm store, wine tavern and ten vacation apartments - in order to survive. Farming and winegrowing is hard work, says Josefine, Edi's 83-year-old mother, and says: "It's only worth it if you put your heart and passion into it and like what you do!
Thomas "Edi" Geiger is not lacking in passion. He is driven by ambition both in the cellar and on the race track. Known as the "fastest winemaker in Germany," he still races up to three superbikes a year on his 160-hp Suzuki machine - and is highly successful in the professional arena. He also always strives for perfection in the wine cellar, he says. "On Lake Constance, the level is so high, everyone gives their all, you have to give 100 percent," says the award-winning winemaker, who trained as a master craftsman and business administrator after completing an apprenticeship in carpentry and viticulture.
Taking off, however, is not his thing. "The most important thing in life is that you always stay grounded," says the farmer's son. His childhood taught him: "We were poor, and they always teased me as a little boy for being a farmer." That's why he always wanted to be more than a mediocre winemaker. He turned his parents' farming and cattle breeding business into one of the most successful private wineries on Lake Constance.
The winemaker is bursting with energy, despite the fact that he has to juggle his job, his high-horsepower hobby and his family of four children. "My day starts at five o'clock in the morning, and as the boss, I'm constantly pitching in. The hard work in the vineyards is what guarantees our success," he says. Today, he says, that makes him proud of where he comes from: "I'm a farmer at heart!"