On the edge of Stuttgart, just half an hour on foot from our Off Grid shop, Harald Wetzel grows Trollinger and Cabernet Franc on the terraced slopes of Degerlocher Scharrenberg. Since his first encounter with wine Harald has been intrigued by the variety of aromas and colours, the shape of a bottle, skillfully crafted labels and the intimate connection it has with the landscape and the people that are its lifeblood. Since the 1400s, vines have been cultivated here on steep slopes with Keuper soil of marl and sandstone. Harald started making wine in 2007, working manually and building a healthy ecosystem. A mixture of flowering plants are sown, casting their roots through the soil at various depths and distances to strengthen and enrich the soil. There is almost always something blooming and it’s no coincidence that many of these plants are great accompaniments for food – rosemary, sage, mint, juniper and thyme – along with protected species, typical of these steep vineyards, like lemon balm and wild marjoram. Every year comes with a new challenge, be it nature, climate, or a combination of the two. Harald sees it as a constant learning process with late frosts, sporadic hail, hot dry periods contrasted by wet seasons, flocks of starling that swoop upon the ripe grapes, or the arrival of Suzuki fly. With each wine comes a unique label, made using lino printing by neighbourhood artist Frank Walka. Block printed individually by hand, the colours vary subtly with each bottle and the label can be removed with water, to be treasured as a small artwork in its own right.
The grapes for Pet Nat ’22 were picked by hand on the 3rd of October, at the peak of ripeness, and pressed a day later. Fermented and aged in a used 300 litre wooden barrel, the wine was bottled on February 25th ’23. A wine that presents itself a little differently with each bottle and is, in Harald’s words, a journey of discovery. Enjoy chilled.