Next to our vinegar cellar, a new orchard has been growing since autumn 2025. Two hectares, planted with standard trees intended to develop large crowns one day, just as fruit trees were cultivated in Styria in the past. They are home to old apple varieties: Ilzer Rosenapfel, Klöcher Maschansker, Steirische Schafnase, Bohnapfel, and Lederapfel.
It takes about ten years for such a tree to bear a full crop. We will then turn these apples into Apple Vinegar and Apple Balsamic Vinegar. The balsamic vinegar then matures in oak barrels for at least ten years. If you do the math, you land around 2045. So, we will bottle the first batch from this orchard in just under twenty years. From time, taste.
Why old varieties
These apples are of little use as table fruit. Often small, they are usually too sour or too tart when eaten raw. In cider and later in the barrel, they bring exactly what a vinegar needs: acidity, tannins, and aromas that have been lost in many modern varieties. Our apple vinegar comes from such cider apples, from Maschansker, Rosenapfel, and Bohnapfel.
Most of these trees are not on our property. They grow on the meadow orchards in the Styrian Volcano Land, tended by farmers some of whom we have worked with for as long as the manufactory has existed. They know who has which varieties, who is harvesting when, and which tree bears a variety that no longer appears in any catalogue. As long as someone needs these fruits, the trees remain standing. And with them, the meadows that define this region. From nature, culture.
What remains
When mashing, we sort, wash, and chop the fruit. Cherries, apricots, peaches, and plums pass through a destoner first, because for Apricot Vinegar or Plum Vinegar, the fruit flesh is what matters. This goes into the fermentation tank. The pits dry in the sun for a few weeks and then end up in our wood chip heating system. We call it our “pit power plant”.
The pomace, i.e., what remains after pressing, is used as fertilizer on our fields and by farmers in the surrounding area. The same applies to the slop, the residue from the distillation boiler. It is spread on fields and in orchards around Riegersburg. A good portion of what comes from the orchards is returned there. The wood for heating comes from our own forests.
Sun and water
We have had our own solar power system since 2016. Today, it covers about half of our electricity needs.
We need a lot of water: for washing the fruit, for cooling, for cleaning. We collect the cooling water and use it for cleaning afterward so that as little drinking water as possible goes unused into the sewer.
Taking time
" Getting bigger is not an end in itself for us. It is more important to make good use of what is already there. An orchard that only provides balsamic vinegar in twenty years fits into this equation. " Kathi & David
