Rosenwiller, Alsace
The Domaine Einhart is located in Northern Alsace, not very far from Strasbourg (about 30 kilometers), in the village of Rosenwiller oçn the slopes of what was known as the Westerberg terroir.
The Einhart farm is known to be
here since 1870, it was converted organic by Nicolas Einhart and his son Théo joined the domaine in 2020 for the pandemic lockdowns after working 2 years in Burgundy in Nuits Saint Georges where he'd never replicate what he learned there, never saw a natural vinification there but he somehow discovered an exciting viticulture philosophy while in the Hautes Côtes de Beaune, it was the first time he heard about the Cours aux Agriculteurs by Rudolf Steiner and in this sense he returned really excited and enriched by his Burgundy experience. His father Nicolas did some pragmatic practiced related to biodynamy with the Masson family which has developped another dimension of this farming philosophy. Because of the pandemic his plans to go train in Italy and in the Bordeaux area were also were aborted and so he unexpectedly returned to Rosenwiller where overnight he stopped his father's bulk-wine contracts and vinified the whole harvest (10 hectares) zero-zero (nothing added and just indigenous yeast)... His father Nicolas had already made several experiments of this order in 2019 with a few macerations which is indeed the most peasant way to make wine. The vineyard hadn't got any synthetic product or herbicide since 2000, so it was well prepared to allow an uninterventionist winemaking.
On the other hand, Théo says, if the vineyard was balanced enough after 20 years of organic farming to be vinified naturally, this first 2020 zero-zero vintage was not as well done as what they make today because of the yields : they had thus to correct, adapt the pruning, control the vigor of the vines in order to make the change really successful. They also had to adapt the way nitrogen was released in the soil for an even better balance. When he took the reins here in 2020 it was really the first time he had such a challenge, he had never done it elsewhere but just trusted the path back to this peasant-style winemaking, using the wild yeast present on the skins, and, for this first vintage, using short macerations for all the cuvées (in large bins), between 5 and 10 days (except for the Pinot-Noir batches) which was the best way to make clean, no-fault wines without adding anything, extracting polyphenols, antioxidants, enzymes and with the advantage to release the sugar much more smoothly, in several steps. Otherwise locally he was helped by Jean-Marc Dreyer, which was very important to guide him through the challenge of vinifying all the fruit naturally.
For this first vintage the challenge was also that there had to be a new customer base, as for the previous vintages Théo's father was selling the wine in bulk to négoce houses. Asked how they did this change, Théo says that at the beginning he worked just 3/4 of his time here at the domaine, which allowed him to work on the sales and commercial side, travelling with bottles of his cuvées to show around his wines to potential buyers, cavistes, restaurants. At the beginning, oddly, he didn't try to sell in Strasbourg but went instead to Lyon, but he has no idea why this choice actually, but he felt well in this city [which is a major regional city known for gastronomy and wine], scouring cavistes (mostly) and restaurateurs there. The fact is, this was still the Wuhan pandemic then, and restaurants hadn't yet reopened, while cavistes were selling a lot of wine, including shortly after in Strasbourg with Oenosphère, Théo says that it was crazy, he's not even sure it would unfold as nicely today if he were in the same situation. So almost overnight they bottled 15 000 bottles and were helped also for the sales by Julien Albertus' Kumpf & Meyer in Alsace nearby and Patrick Bouju in Auvergne, both Julien and Patrick having a négoce part where they sell other, same-minded vignerons's wines. Julien, whom Théo had met at the Salon des Vins Libres was the one who made with Théo's father Nicolas these first tries with short macerations in 2019. this way, Théo and his father could sell basically all this first vintage.
We're looking at organic compost behind a Fendt tractor, he says he's getting rid soon of this tractor because in spite of its small size it's too heavy and it's very important to prevent the soil from being compacted by the repeated passagers of tractors. He now uses exclusively a quag bike, it's so light and allows him to be really in contact with the parcel he works on. Speaking of nitrogen fertilizer he says,
the yearly needs of the vineyard is 40 units
per hectare and vignerons usually put 30 units par year, while here he puts only 8 units. He ideally tries to tend toward zero but after the difficult past year which was very dry with little mineralization in the soil, they had to complement the soil. I, the past there was snow every winter on the Vosges slopes, and snow is known as the nitrogen of the poor, the vines rebound energically after a snowy winter, but this cold-winters era is gone for now (this year they had two centimeters of snow and it lasted two days). Trying to have the soil manage its own balance with little outside help is important for him because he favors a vineyard management that is peasant style. there's kind of a disconnect when you signal an organic farming with leaving the grass grow, etc... and adding every year 30 units of nitrogen. He is no part of this and will keep relying of minimal nitrogen adding.
He also uses green, self-produced fertilizers the domaine partly produces itself : he grows fava beans (organicly of course) in a field on the same type of soil than the targetted vineyards (the field is the one in the center of this picture on right) and later uses the seeds to sow between the rows (after the harvest) and help the vineyard generate its own fertilizer. He says it's better than use seeds that have grown in totally different conditions and soils. They will later sow again the fields with the excess seeds in order to refurbish the following year's seed stock. Between the rows they thus get a first growth before winter (this plant resists frost until -15 C or 5 F) and the rest growing later in spring. No plowing, there's no mowing either, except once before harvest. The soils are very poor and the grass doesn't grow high anyway (except like in 2021).
Théo says that in order to reduce the amout of sulfur and copper sprayed on the vines, he and his team use whey from a couple friends who run an organic goat farm in the area (the oldest such organic goat-cheese farm in the region), the GAEC du Graal, and they don't have a market for all their byproduct whey of their farms, so Théo collects this whey which he uses for spraying, as it is known to fight quite efficiently powdery mildew and thus scale down the amount of sulfur/copper dumped unto the vines and soil. While Théo would be reluctant to use milk as it is really a food product, it's different with whey which is a byproduct these farms have no market for, so he feels there's an interesting complementary relation between organic domaines and cheese farms here. So he uses the whey to blend it with very low doses of sulfur/copper, to which, depending of the season and the vintage direction, he adds horsetail and yarrow. Sometimes, for curative purposes and used with care, he may add orange peel essential oils. All along summer he sprays also dynamized silica, using his light quad bike for the job.
Recently Théo had the chance he says to take part to a training with Dominique Massenot (he's listed in this viticulture trainings list page), the guy is a technician who is convinced of the efficiency of biodynamy although he pushes neither toward the Rudolf Steiner or Maria Thun schools of thought. He uses sensitive crystallization as well with very convincing effect where he found out for example that common thinking saying that the 500 P or 500 should be sprayed in one hour maximum is erroneous : its efficiency actually lasts two or three days, there's no rush to use all the 500 batch at once...So THéo applied biodynamic practices in the vineyard but he doesn't adhere to any certification, either Demeter or Biodyvin. Massenot also found out through tests that the 500 P is no substitute for the 500, each have their own action, the 500 has really an impact on the soil and if you spray only one of the two, keep the 500. Here at Einhart it's been 5 years they make their own biodynamic preparations and it makes a differencein the soil life with different weeds growing allowing a lighter work on the soil.
We tour the facility, there's a large open courtyard in the back of the farm (pic on left) with room to move stuff around, the press is suspended mid level between the
building and the neighbor's,
it's a 20-year-old Willmes and they're very happy about it for the quality of its pressing and its extraction, the membrane wrapping the whole batch of grapes, compared to a Vaslin where it's kind of a half membrane, this gives different kind of pressing as a result, with the juice flowing out from the middle, not from the side. I notice that the facility is thus located in the midst of the village, and knowing that some vignerons across France have trouble with the village administration for the disturbances at harvest time, I ask Théo if they got flak from the city hall or neighbors for noise or else, he says no, never had problems about it.
There's a roof above the press, this whole installation allow to work totally by gravity, it has been done by Nicolas's father and you understand why the quasi-professional workshop was central to engineer all this... Under the press there's a large maie, the open container where all the juce flows in first, it has a capacity of 2 hectoliters and allows the juice to be oxygenated, that's where the fermentation starts.
We walk by the quad bike he now loves so much to get around the parcels and work in there, be it spraying or even change the stakes and plant new ones, he says he rediscovers his vineyard since he uses this quad, there's no way he'll come back to a tractor for spraying and several other tasks, even a narrow one, because with this bike he feels the contact with the vines, he can see details more accurately, stop any time and jump more easily to fix things or look behind a grape he just sprayed, it's a wholly different experience, and of course again, with very little compacting of the soil.
This new tractor which he uses for slicing the earth under the rows or mowing is Italian made, very original design, you can drive both ways, the seat along with the controls can be turned around at will. This is an Antonio Carraro.
Théo says that it is very important to adapt the vinification from a parcel to the other because today it has become very complicated to vinify with direct press, because the grapes in general the juice ferment less swiftly, there's less assimilable nitrogen, we tend to have now strong and early maturities, with more sugar and less acidity, and even though here for example last year the fermentations were swift and nice, he had launched an investigation on his different parcels' soils, with soil pits (fosses pédologiques in French) to map precisely the capabilities of his lieux-dits. His goal in the folloowing year is let express the lieux-dits more than the varieties. He had the chance to meet people like Michel Haber and Dominique Schwartz (professor of geology at the University of Strasbourg) who helped him analyze his terroir and soil through soil pits, you can see on this page how it looks like. there, Théo learnt how to read these soil pits to do this in his other parcels, interpret and gauge the substratum, the first horizons, detect soil compaction, check the rooting, the genetics.The soil in general is strong in active limestone.
In terms of rootstock, here the general choice is among SO4, Fercal, 5BB, today also the Paulsen. Given what you know of their respective vigor, the soil nature, their rooting style (which differer depending of the rootstock type), you'll adapt the vines, pruning, trellising, height... they also make experiments with rootstock, planting them by themselves for a while so that they maximize the rooting first and later grafting them with a given varietal. Doing so, they loose one or two years on the fruit side but anyway today with the weather conditions a new parcel is not productive before 5 or 6 years. and in order to keep the vine focused on rooting and foliage, he cuts down all the fruit in an early green harvest along the first 3 years. About the hybrids he's not convinced it's a long term solution, they often have been designed for a particular region and their immunity to disease could erode in the future, he noticed for example that last year they had a type of oidium which they had never seen before, some strange things are going on. And the parcels that were attacked were only the windy ones on upper slopes with Gewürz and Riesling that had never had a problem before. Speaking of hybrids, he follows what people into them do and write, for example the book of Valentin Morel who replanted his vineyard in Jura with hybrids, he says the book is super interesting and he loved it, but for here he prefers try another direction. He thinks that before betting everything on genetics we have to explore other factors, like the yields, there's a possibility lower yields could help eschew the magnitude of attacks for example.
So as said, he used macerations in his first vintage in 2020 but stopped thereafter, except that instead of regular macerations they now do pre-fermentation macerations : they pick the grapes in 20-kg boxes (he learnt that in Burgundy) until maximum 11 am, destem them (at least last year because of oidium) and store them in the colds at a temperature of 10-12 C (50-53,6 F) for 8 to 12 hours. The goal is to begin to ferment at this temperature because above it would go to fast. The goal is to trigger enzymatic dynamics, the yeast as well but he doesn't want to ferment right away full blown. He usually checks the density when the grapes come in, then just before pressing and he considers if the sugar is already down by then, he missed his shot. If the juice had already begun to ferment then it would mean extraction and he doesn't want that at this stage, he wants to keep his whites with a structure of white, an astringency of white and acidity of white, something very pure which they learnt to do along these 3 consecutive vinifications.
We walk past a crate with petnat bottles, it's a small-volume cuvée Théo is making with a batch of grapes every year, with a volume like 5000 bottles a year. He's producing them with disgorgements spread over several times throughout the year, it's all done manually, no gyro system here, and it gives him clues about how the petnat evolves with different time lengths sur lattes. He'll disgorge this particular batch in two or three weeks.
Here are a few nests they're going to place in the parcel this year, Théo says they try to add some 15 nests every year across their surface, the ones on the left are designed to host bats, which take a huge toll on pests. He says they have the chance that the LPO-Alsace [Bird Protection League] is headquartered nearby in Rosenwiller, so they help with their know-how and resource and at Einhart they have been working with them for 4 years, like the LPO does countings, checking how many nests are occupied. As a result they see a bird population which they didn't see before, proof that this works. In the past there were lots of old stone heaps along the parcels (with stones taken out from the soil I guess) and bats would nest deep behind these stones, but many domaines got rid of these stones, which is too bad for bats; on their parcels they still have such piles of stones but nonetheless expand the accomodations for these auxiliary predators. The odd thing is that mainstream wineries aren't fond of putting such nests (they're not compatible with combine harvesting and other machines) and Einhart is the only one here to do it.
Here is the small bottling line, he prefers to use their own system than call a mobile service, he did it once but when he saw the impact on his wines he opted for doing it himself. These external bottlers can do 2000 bottles per hour when this one does 1000 maximum with oversized pumps, plus these bottlers don't like when you don't filter the wine prior, so he better not work like that (all his wines are unfiltered and get no so2 even before bottling - he only put 1gram/hecto of sulfites in one batch of Pinot Blanc this year because of a big push of volatile). In addition he can work just by gravity if he wants with this bottling line, the other thing nice with this machine is that its intermediate tank has a capacity of only 30 liters, versus 200 liters for these bottling services (with such a large volume you stir the wine way too much).
The cellar has been built built in several installments over several generations, beginning with his great grandfather. In the past there were only big Alsatian foudres like these, but to day he says he can't afford to work only with such foudres, and also as his goal is to vinify the parcels separately he needs smaller containers. Théo says something else about his short pre-fermentation low-temp maceration, it is that it helps his juice pass more quickly the stage of non-saccharomyces yeasts which happens before the regular saccharomyces fermentation, the first ones starting really the fermentation but smell methyl acetate (glue) and eggs. He says that when you do this short low-temperature pre-fermentation maceration you jump more quickly to the main fermentation stage because he exctracts enzymes, nitrogenous materials which will be used by the main, saccharomyces yeast...
__ First wine taken from the last foudre on the right (the #4, with a capacity of 64 hectoliters) : a white with a marked color which is typical for this variety, Auxerrois. this wine is 100 % Auxerrois from vines aged between 20 and thirty years, it comes from a parcel named Salmestal, which has a soil 2 meters deep with clay into which the roots can dig far, and on slopes from 20 % to 30 %. This soil is very rich, very clayish and humid, this small valley (Tal means valley in Alsatian) is very humid on the whole. Théo says that given these particulars and their relations with the etheric and astral parameters, he thinks it could be wise to try a maceration again for the grapes growing there, with their deep rooting and their heightened etheric side. He remembers the result was terrific in 2020 (the only year he did days-long macerations) on this for example. He mulls about this issue only for this terroir because the most of his other parcel grow on very shallow soil (maximum 50 centimeters/ 8 inches) with bedrock just beneath. Asked about the hydric stress on these shallow soils, Théo says not too bad because there are layers of loess in the limestone that help humidity and freshness get back up.
__ Sylvaner from the parcel named Weingarten, he took the sample from one of these Becker tanks (not the one he's at on the picture, but the one at the far end, on top) which are very convenient because you can pile up several ones with different capacities (he has 13, 16, 17, 22 and 30 hectoliters). This parcel is quite wonderful and this varietal which has been belittled for so many years in alsace fares beautifully there. The wine here is pretty clear with a light turbidity. Delicious wine, sappy, freshness in the mouth with salinity. He credits the clayish soil for the quality of this wine, these is lower-slope clay with some kind of spring running beneath it, it's very humid and the yields are very good, like last year on this parcel they picked 65 ho/ha there. And this wine tastes so good, showing that yields are not antinomic to good, balanced wine. And Théo adds that yields were not sought after particularly, this parcel hasn't see fertilizers or plowing for years, he says some parcels like that get by their own beautifully, some soil genetics allow it with ease and forcing the vines through pruning to scale the yield dramatically is inhibiting something the parcel can do with balance. Speaking of yields, the domaine on its whole surface has an average yield of 42 ho/ha, compared to the region's 80. On some parcels he can't get more than 20 ho/ha, the soil genetics decides, it's a question of balance.
Speaking of the fermentation, meaning sluggish or swift, with the zero-zero policy (no plowing, no fertilizers) he experimented on certain parcels, he had parcels that went down from 45 ho/ha to 5 ho/ha, and with fermentations that just stalled, stopping after 3 days. He thinks that's because too much competition in the soil, not enough nitrogen in the juice. to correct that he just passed with his blades to make a light work on the soil under the rows (but still no fertiliers) and the result was obvious the folling year with yields up and juice that fermented smoothly.
__ Pinot Gris. We now taste a wine for which he initially thought he had made a mistake : For the first time he had decided for a parcel not to use the refractometer, just tasting the grapes to decide when the sugar level was good for picking, and it happened that year that the Pinots Noirs and the Pinots Gris had bunches' insides that weren't as ripe as their outsides, and his gustative appreciation was misleaded, he should have waited more before picking, he realized the mistake by doing the mustimetry with the juice. But this error turned out later to yield a very nice wine. Here there was no pre-fermentary maceration, it's a direct press because there was a bit of rot on these grapes. Color : Pronounced color typical of Pinot Gris. Nice chew with just the right bitterness, brought by the acidity. The wine makes 12 % and if picked at the right maturity is should have been closer to 14 %. He says this mistake was good luck because the Pinots Gris in 2023 aren't very deep and this higher-than-normal acidity gives his wine a structure, a salivating nature it wouldn't have had. Asked what he'll do for the following harvest for this parcel, he says he'll taste more to take into account what he learnt here. the wine is still a baby here, with the grapes picked in september and we're in early march, so it'll be even better after settling down.
__ Auxerrois 70 %, 30 % Pinot Gris, grown on the same parcel on Frohnberg and picked together (but no complantation, just rows grouped together). Difficult parcel he says, with very low yields. It could come from an ill-chosen clone, he doesn't know for sure, the terroir of Frohnberg is very poor with lots of stones, it's a summit of a combe (a small, steep valley) with woods in the back, often a very humid place, and he says it's a contrast with the mouthfeel of the wine, very warmful. There's indeed such a beautiful richness, you'd almost think there's some residual sugar but it's dry, it's the fruity expression that gives it this warmfulness, with a candy-coated effect, and yet, as Théo says, this very fluid salivation feel, and the wine sports only 12,5 % alcohol.
__ From another Becker tank : 100 % gewürztraminer, vines on loess, aeolian veneers of calcareous sands, these soils are not very rich but eveything grows on loess, yields are not over the top but there's no hydric stress. He's happy because these Gewürztraminer have a lot of depth, with this amplitude of loess without the opulence of clay and more angular structures on the palate. Very nice mouth feel with this wine indeed ! Delicious, and again it's way too early to drink it...
__ Fleckstein 2023, a 100 % Riesling on its lees, the vines growing on a soil with iron veins. This is the parcel (surface 20 ares) where he had stopped doing any work on the soil. The wine is still turbid but Théo says it's not related to the properties of the egg-shaped containers, it's this part of the cellar, there's something possibly related to the energy fields on this side and whatever the container, barrel or egg, the wines remain turbid. In the mouth the wine is excitingly sappy and saline. Théo says that vinifying in these eggs gives wines that are more luninous, with frank acidities. These 550-liter eggs are made near Limoges by Biopythos. No need to top up and in terms of oxygenation these are between foudres (a bit) and stainless steel (zero). Very nice wine !
__ Pinot Noir Albermohn 2023, the parcel name means "Albertine poppy" in Alsatian because in the past poppy was growing on these slopes, now they're still around but on the top of the hills, certainly a move caused by raising temperatures. They have 1,5 hectare of Pinot Noir, of red, so. This Pinot Noir has had extraction only through pumping over, and not through pigeage. Such a fruit ! And knowing this will beginning to reach its window 2 years from now it's very exciting how it already tastes so good. 2/3 has its élevage in the foudres (that's the sample we're tasting) and 1/3 in stainless.
So here above the village of Rosenwiller we're on a lieu-dit named Mayen. Théo says that wen they prune they grind on the spot all the cut wood and canes, here this is a parcel of Muscat of different ages (25 & 15), some being Muscat Rose and some Muscat à Petits Grains Blanc. He enjoys himself trying different pruning styles in this parcel; 4 years ago they began to favor the taille douce promoted by Marceau Bourdarias, it was for him an awakening to discover this approach regarding the old wood, the management of the fruit load, this understanding of the vine. To say it short, after learning this approach, he'll prune less short and optimize the foliage exposition, the rooting which will develop in parallel, refurbish the vine's basic physiology through the cambium, the hormonal side as well. Today, he doesn't cut the wood older than 2 years because otherwise you're drying out the wood all the way down. Théo folows with explanations about the sap flow on a given vine we're in front of, that is hard to recount but you feel he's very at ease with all these mysteries and how to interpret the situation each time as it's different with every individual vine.
Also, unlike what is being done in Alsace, he won't lower the vines' height, it damages the wood and weakes the vine. He shows me a vine like this one above for example and says that for the Alsacian mainstream the way he's managing its training, height and pruning here is just crazy. but he disbuds a lot, keeping 8 buds total with an expanded foliage exposition and an optimal maturation. But he'll never lower the vine because if he cuts it, one time or another it'll dry up down to the rootstock, loosing sap flows avenues and cambium for nothing in return, doing so makes the vine loose energy, this restricts its way of exchanging between its raw sap with its elaborated sap.
Here we look a a parcel of Riesling with the village of Rosenwiller in the background, you may spot a couple of bird/bat nests hanging above the vines. You can see the vines how they're trained, all with a long, single cane, lying horizontally, not arched in the Alsatian fashion.
Comments