The Oldest Winery In the World Is Building Resilience Through Hybrid Grapes & Vitiforestry

This episode is a conversation with three gents who help caretake the oldest winery in the world: Staffelter Hof. It has been a winery since the 800s… and it seems incredibly fitting that Jan Matthias Klein, Kosie van der Merwe, and Nicolas Haack are thinking and talking about how to build resilience into their systems. They farm organically, have planted PIWIs, and implements several hectares of a vitiforestry block. We dig into what’s going on in the Mosel that has necessitated and allowed for these changes. We dig into their vitiforestry project, and talk about the mindset shift that may be required to embrace it. Shade is not shade as it turns out, in the sense that there are many kinds of shade and not all shade is equal. We look at how some aspects that may be perceived as potential problems of vitiforestry become irrelevant once you take a different perspective. Monoculture has infiltrated the way we think, as it turns out, and diversity grows out of a change in thinking.

Staffelter Hof seems to be embracing the Albert Einstein quote: We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

And I hope this conversation helps inspire you to new ways of thinking.

https://www.staffelter-hof.de/

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