We met Georg on a blistering hot day in July of 2018. He was the last stop on our short tour through the Burgenland countryside visiting winemakers. After meeting with Gut Oggau, Rennersistas and Judith Beck we stumbled upon a winemaker we hadn’t heard of before, Georg Schmelzer.

 We were cooling off in the air conditioning of a local grocery store when Georg picked us up in his old pick up truck. Immediately he took us for a drive around the vineyard-studded hills of Gols, where most of the winemakers of the town had their vines. Gols, a hotbed of natural winemaking, is a town of around 4000 people, it feels like every person here is in some way affiliated with wine.

We drove  through hills of vineyards where Georg pointed out the vines of many famous winemakers, then we arrived at his vines.

"What difference do you see between all of these other vines, compared to mine?", he asks as we are walking through his rows, waist high and brimming with life and color. A cover crop is the difference, and boy did his vines look healthy, so he must be doing something right! 

The cover crop debate is as old as wine making itself. It's a tool to help winegrowers manage their soils, protecting them from erosion and helping with humidity control, as well as fertilizing. 

"Everybody is afraid of powdery mildew, what they don't understand is that nature regulates itself and the diversity and tall height of my cover crops protects them from it more!", he explains. Powdery Mildew is the bane of every grape grower’s existence, a fungal disease that attacks the leaves of the vines. With a careful selection of native plants to the area he managed to combat powdery mildew in his climate!

Georg's family vineyard applied conventional farming and winemaking practices. When Georg was growing up he felt this special connection with the vines (he says that when he meditates he knows how his vines are feeling), and already at a young age felt like most of the pesticides and additives his family’s winery were using weren’t necessary. Unfortunately his family didn’t agree. 

When he took over his  family’s operation he slowly transitioned farming to a biodynamic manner (not certified) and started removing additives in the wine. His family changed their minds after tasting his low intervention wines.

When he went to his first Demeter (Biodynamic certification) conference he didn't know that there were other people like him, and it didn't take him long to get a certification as he was already applying most of the required biodynamic principles to his vineyards and vinification. 

 He shows us a barn full of dried plants and Spagyrik elixirs (natural potions dating back to Paracelsus, the idea is the assumption of an energy of creation that is everywhere in the cosmos and can be grasped in structure) brewing next to boxes filled with cow horns. 

According to Rudolph Steiner's biodynamic principles (which we will deep dive into another time) he only uses natural methods of fertilizing and pest control and harnesses the power of the cosmos in his fields by stuffing cow horns with dung and placing them in specific places around the vineyards. The cow horns are buried in the fall and dug up in the spring, the dung removed and mixed with water, then  sprayed on the ground around the farm. These are only a couple of 9 biodynamic preparations practiced in farming, each of them acting as a tonic and homeopathic treatment.