This article is adapted from Natural Trailblazers: 13 Ways to Climate-Friendly Wine, to be published on 21 October 2024 and currently available for pre-order. In the Swiss Alps, husband-and-wife Romaine and Hans-Peter Schmidt have created an island for humans and animals, insects and microbes to thrive in a sea of conventional vineyards. A combination of no-till, green manure, vitoforestry, and biochar makes their legendary winery Mythopia carbon neutral in the vineyard. I’m outside a bakery in Sion, with a view of the railway tracks and the snowy peaks on the horizon. It’s a surreal combination of nature and industry. A…
Camilla Gjerde is a passionate natural wine lover. Ever since her first sip of Arianna Occhipinti’s Il Frappato in 2008, she has explored the world of natural wine. But what matters most to her is the passion and the person behind the wine. She is the author of the first book on women in natural wine, "We Don’t Want Any Crap in Our Wine." Her second book "Natural Trailblazers" celebrates winegrowers and importers who slash wine’s carbon footprint, out in October 2024. @gjerdecamilla
In a Swiss park, a footpath leads from Leuk, a village straddling the Rhone, up to Varen, which is perched on a cliff. The trail is steep and strewn with pebbles in early summer. But three lightfooted young people with small backpacks move at a steady pace, in the way the Swiss tend to do when they grow up hiking in the Alps. The trio checks a list of clues they picked up at the Leuk tourism office. This treasure hunt will take them along groomed trails for eight hours (several pauses included) to wineries within the extraordinary Pfyn Nature…...
Terry Theise. Until quite recently, I would have written “an importer of German and Austrian wine who needs no introduction.” But over the past year, the axis of wine, not to mention the world, has shifted. A slew of new wine lovers might just need to be brought up to speed on this pioneering champion of “umlaut-bearing wines” (a term Theise coined long before we or anyone else). Theise fell for German wine and wine culture while living in Munich in his 20s. When he returned to the U.S. in the early 1980s, he brought this zeal back with him. He…...
By traditional measures, my first year of college was a waste. I spent a lot of it playing cards with a gang of liberal theologians at a Jesuit university in California. Towering above the group was our guru, the truest Renaissance man I’ve ever met — priest, medieval scholar, professional clown, and director of his own traveling circus. He spent most of each year wandering from one Catholic university to another, plying his gift for persuasion. But he always made time for cards when he was in town. When not lobbying for Christ, he was partial to Texas Hold ’em,…...
A new wave of vignerons is gathering strength in Swiss wineries. They are young, eclectic, and often organic or biodynamic in their work. Most are keenly focused on sustainability and trying disease-resistant grapes. Thirty of them, who go by JSNW (Junge Schweiz Neue Winzer, or Young Switzerland New Vignerons), offer a snapshot of this generation, all under age 40. The association was created in 2010 in Zurich to put “sharing” in boldface: of experience and ideas, but most of all of their wines and feedback, at regular meetups. The group has expanded to include vignerons from the French- and Italian-speaking…...
Archetype, a Portland, Oregon-based import start-up, is focused on Alpine wines. They are refining consumer's understanding of the category and building community near and far.
