A Tasting at Ducksoup with Jonas Brand

BRAND BROS - DANIEL & JONAS BRAND

On Monday, January 22 we'll be teaming up with our pal Roland Wines for our first tasting of the year at Ducksoup‌ Soho ! A tasting for the trade, from 10am until 4pm, please RSVP if you'd like to attend.

We're very pleased to also have Jonas Brand with us for the day, to open as many of the Brand‌ Bros wines as we can.

If you haven't been lucky enough to meet Jonas and hear firsthand his enthusiasm and knowledge for agriculture and winemaking, we'd heartily recommend jumping at the chance. Those who have had the opportunity will know this isn't one to miss.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Talking About Regeneration: A Conversation with Jonas Brand

BRAND BROTHERS - DANIEL & JONAS BRAND

Germany, Pfalz, Bockenheim

On regular calls with Jonas Brand, ostensibly to get information about upcoming releases, the conversation often enough falls down the ever-inspiring wormhole of his and Daniel's approach to farming. It's hard to leave a conversation with Jonas not feeling optimistic about the future, and charged with ideas.

With the release of their 2021 Pinot Noir and Monastery Riesling, we thought it would be a nice opportunity to print a full conversation with Jonas about regenerative agriculture, as a bit of an introduction to the term, and a deeper dive for those interested. Photographs by the Brand Brother's talented friend Holger Riegel.

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UTB: Hey Jonas! I really like the fact that you have a method you stick to for making each of the wines now. As followers of yours and Daniels journey, it's great to know that the only thing really changing year to year is the weather, and to a certain extent the agriculture. How did you decide to work in the way that's since come to be called Regenerative Agriculture?

Jonas: Exactly, the wines we've made more or less the same way for a while now. We know how we want to capture each variety or parcel. But it's the farming that evolves, and I find that very exciting. Sure, we'll make small adaptations if something major changes, to be careful with tannic extractions and such. But more or less, we stick to our plan!

When we started with the viticulture, we knew we wanted to work organically. That was important, but it was not our idea to work regeneratively straight away. That was something that has developed naturally and slowly, reading and comparing ideas with other growers. It dawned on us it was the way we wanted to grow.

When we began, the term wasn't even used very much. But, for me it's a good term, it really sums up what we're all trying to achieve. Building up soil fertility and health, and trying by all means to not deplete it!

The scary thing is that, most soils on our planet are degrading soils. Farmland is getting worse, but luckily there's a way out. Plants can thrive if we let them, if we don't force them. We can use the natural balance of an area to increase fertility in the soils, and we end up with more nutrients.

When we started organic, we did the classic thing everyone does when they come out of school. You till once, sow a cover crop, it grows nicely, you mow it because you're worried it's competition for the vines... maybe let it grow again, then you till again, or till the next row... working so hard to have an idea of this pretty aspect of farming, a kind of forced diversity, lots of flowers... but, where does nature work like that? Nature doesn't work like that!

Nature is a few flowering plants here and there, grasses, legumes, real diversity, and chaos! Some of these plants need more than a year to establish. To be mowing, tilling, re-sowing, it's such a waste of seed, and energy. Of course, you might need to do this at the beginning to get a solid base, but you should let nature guide it from there.

So once we came to that realisation; that's what we did, let nature be the guide. You can do this system for a long time: truly not interfering, not opening the soil. We've been able to do that for the last six years.

Now, the speed of things is slowing, so it's time to look at how to use other the seasons. I'd really like to know how to use the wet winters here better, to do direct-seeding (seeding directly into the soil without breaking the soil) of winter grains into the rows of vines. That way the winter grains can build up organic matter for the year ahead whilst the vines are dormant. That's something I've been experimenting with, seeding rows of vines with oats.

In spring, our natural cover crop just jumps up, there's lots of grasses, lots of clover to fixate nitrogen. It's very diverse, but only grows when there's more warmth. The spring cover and the summer cover I love because they grow naturally, lots of crown-vetch and yarrow. Lots of local plants really, that grow so much over the warm seasons.

We roller crimp them, to mimic animals walking. This way the plant thinks it's dying and re-seeds itself. From that crimped part of the plant new shoots grow, and we have 10-15 cm of mulch layers, so the soil is always covered in our vineyards.

We'd love to work exclusively with animals, rather than tractors. But we have quite a lot of land, and it's really important to us to make affordable wines, that many people can drink. So we use a some modern techniques - which I don't think is a bad thing. As long as soil health and fertility aren't compromised.

For me, it all comes back to protecting the soil. Plants reseeding themselves, animals walking over it, forcing it to grow; things we can mimic a bit by ourselves. Like this, we build up so much soil fertility that we never need compost.

So, out of our 17 plots: just 7 will get a little compost tomorrow, some that are young, or some that we've taken over recently - basically the ones that haven't established this system yet.

In our plots where we've worked this way for the longest, the nutrition is huge. For example, many growers put their grape pomace back into the vineyards. I can add it to the youngest ones, but in most of ours it would create over-fertility. That for me is regenerating the land: we've created excess nutrition!

When I worked with James Erskine in Australia, we'd feed it to the cows. They love it. There's a farmer in town that I can give it to now we have an excess, in return we can get manure for younger vineyards. We're always finding ways to close these loops.

You sent me the picture of that super-sized clover in your vineyards when you were shoot-thinning over summer, it's such a simple illustration of how much vigour there is in your vineyards now, these things growing way beyond the size we'd normally find. You can absolutely feel that energy in the wines.

You've also started farming grain recently, harvesting 400 kilos of mixed wheat populations - how did you decide to start growing wheat?

There's a few reasons why we started with agriculture again. The first is this is how the farm used to be with my grandma and grandpa: mixed agriculture with grains, fields - the wine was the smallest part. So, we still have that farmland. We never sold the fields, just leased them out to other farmers who were working more conventionally. But then I started thinking about regenerating the land, worrying about climate change.

I felt like our family's land was out there with degrading soil, and it could be used instead to help fight climate change. It's just 4 or 5 hectares, but we can help set examples for other growers in the area, other people who are paying attention to what we do because we're wine growers.

In lockdown, I got really into researching direct-seeding in the vineyards, and that pulled me back into agriculture. It all got me onto farming in the general sense. With vineyards, it's easy to regenerate the land, because you essentially have rows of little trees with roots that go very deep, and then lots of space that you can regenerate the top-soil with organic matter.

I got really deep into agroforestry, thinking about trees in fields - the landscape in our area is so fucking poor. On our side of the valley there's no trees, just agricultural farmland. So I had the idea to create more diversity, and hopefully make it nicer. But planting trees without purpose is really difficult because the land is expensive. So on these 5 hectares we decided to do mixed agriculture whilst also planting trees.

Over the first few years, the trees won't make any shade or combat nutrients, and I can grow grain in between. But in 20 years we might need to look at the system differently, because the trees will have established. The orchard we planted is 30 different fruit trees, peaches, apples, quince, mirabelle plums, we'll hopefully make a mixed-fruit cider from it.

I really love that the project is growing from a family winery, into a very holistic approach with so many strands that will develop over the next few years. That must link in with the local community, and your connections to other producers in the area.

We have these connections with restaurants, and a local bakery, that creates so much possibility. The baker at Pankratiushof has agreed to take all my yields of grain which is exciting. Eventually we'll have fruit, cider, wine of course, grain, potatoes. It's super nice for us, and for our team. Our employees and our family will have first picks and then what's left we can sell.

I think it helps build a greater sense of community, in our team but also in our village. There will be a price list for locals so they can get really amazing products for less than they would pay in the supermarket. We can sell directly to people, directly to restaurants, and hopefully give people really nice products for nice prices.

I'm really excited to be having these conversations with people in the area and further: because we have wine as a platform to have these conversations. For some reason, people are listening to winemakers. It would be amazing for a grain farmer to have the same platform as a winemaker, maybe soon they will. But for now; I have this platform, so I can tell everyone about grain, about the possibility you have with regenerating the land!

It's been really interesting developing this project, and really cool. My wife Pauline is supporting me big time with this, with calculating and planning; it's been amazing to have something to work on together. It's turning into something very beautiful. My parents gave us the possibility that we could even do something like this, but of course its eating into our time schedule! My dad is always thinking with my ideas: "not another crazy idea Jonas!" But he always sees the benefits... he comes round eventually!

Portugeezers: A chat with Jonas Brand

Weingut Brand
Germany, Pfalz, Bockenheim

As the sun arrives, so do the wines from those sunny German brothers, Daniel & Jonas Brand. Arriving with this tranche is a top up of their single-varietal whites from 2019, their 2020 not-nouveau: Brand Rot and the new vintage of Wildrosé. 

We caught up with Jonas recently as he was negotiating his tractor through the wind tunnel that is their Portugieser vineyards. The growing season has been slow in the Pfalz this year; the slowest Jonas has seen, "It scares you as a farmer, you don't know how to act. Some shoots are only at 3cm and others are at 15cm. It makes it really hard to make decisions."

2020 was by contrast, incredibly convenient. The growing season was paced nicely, speedy but not so fast that the brothers were rushed. Jonas feels like their energy going into harvest has really paid off in the wines:  "What I believe is: that spirit you're in on the approach to, and during harvest contributes the most to the wines, and we had an amazing team. If we have good food, good energy, a good vibe, then we're all in a good state of mind, especially my brother & I, it really helps the wines."

Whilst up in the Portugieser vineyards, trying to spray into the wind against powdery & downy mildew, Jonas discussed two of the new arrivals picked from these plots, Wild Rosé 2019 and the Brand Rot 2020:

“Portugieser grows super nicely, it's very healthy- but the deer love it. They love to snack on the shoots, that's the biggest problem in a farming sense. So we get good yields mostly, and the quality is great. But as a varietal, it's really high in PH, so in the cellar it's more complicated. It's hard to make no sulphur natural wines with it, so we have to be careful. 

“Wildrosé is one of my favourite wines of ours, but it's never the easiest to make for this reason. The 2016 & 2017 got mousy pretty fast, and we realised they just need time. It changes so much after half a year, the mouse was completely gone in the 16 & 17 after 6 months. So for this wine we always give it half a year or more once bottled, and it's so fresh and stable.

“Each variety we work in a specific way, so we pick all the Portugieser and process it in one go. They get a very vigorous foot stomp, sit on the skins for two or three days before pressing, and then we split it up in the end: we fill a very large 100 year old barrel, and a couple of smaller 10 year old barrels, for Wildrosé. The juice that's left goes to tank for the Brand Rot. 

“So the Nouveau, or... not-nouveau by the time we release it, has this foot stomped Portugieser, and a little carbonic maceration Cab Franc to make up about 15% of the blend. We have a little plot here, and we love the variety, it gets ripe, but not over-ripe. We use the carbonic to bring that fresh fruity vibe and lose some greener notes, it works really nicely with Portugieser. We'll also keep a few barrels from other vintages of Cab Franc, we taste them as we're making up the blend, and some of those might go in also.

“We bottle in November, and we used to release it like a Nouveau, but it does need time, so now we wait. But it makes sense for us because this is another one to drink in the park, with your friends, with a little chill. It's a much nicer time of year for this wine! 

"I've never seen so much wind in one year! This was my first attempt spraying this year, I was trying to use the gaps where there was no wind. Every day for the last two months has just been wind, wind, wind."

As Jonas abandoned spraying in a gale (his aim is to use tiny doses of copper (1oz p/ha), a tactic not suited to anything other than pretty still conditions) he drove back home, showing us the new plot at the top of the hill where they'll be planting Portugieser on limestone. 

“We have just under 2 hectares of Portugieser, but we love the Wildrosé and the Brand Rot and we really want to make more of them. So we're planting more, and we just bought a new Portugieser vineyard. We're going hard on the Portugieser! These are both wines that everyone deserves to drink, we want to make sure we have enough to go around.”

JUST LANDED

SPARKLING

2019 - Landwein - Pet Nat - Silvaner, Pinot Blanc

WHITE

2019 - Kabinett, Trocken - Stein & Fels - Riesling

2019 - Landwein - Riesling Pur - Riesling

2019 - Landwein - Riesling Pur (Magnum Only) - Riesling

2019 - Landwein - Pinot Blanc Pur - Pinot Blanc

ROSE

2019 - Landwein - Wild Rosé - Portugieser

RED
2020 - Landwein - Brand Red - Portugieser

For wholesale price lists please email hello@winesutb.com

Daniel, Jonas & ‘Birkenstock Man’

A Chat with the Brand Brothers

Germany, Pfalz, Bockenheim
 

Our chat with Daniel & Jonas (May 2020):

How have things been going for you over the last few months?
To be honest, the pandemic hasn’t affected us massively in our daily lives. We are so engulfed in our work in the vineyard. It was nice for Jonas to be able to slow down as well as he was gone most of last year. 
We were also lucky in a sense that most of our workers, who come mainly from either Germany or Romania, stayed around during the lockdown here with us. 
We’ve enjoyed using this time to slow down and really take care of the vineyards.

What happened business wise is that as soon as the lockdown started most of the wholesale orders got cancelled. This was right at the beginning and if you would have talked to me then, I would definitely not be in such a good mood. 
What happened then was that we adapted and did deliveries to private customers instead. People were stuck at home but they still wanted wine! So from then on it went uphill. But overall I think we were making about 50-60% of our usual profits, which was better than expected. Now things are looking better again and we have picked up another 20%. 

We are relying heavily on our importers and we think everyone has done a great job to adapt themselves to the situation.

Also it was interesting to see how the online wine business has developed in Germany during this time. It was rather slow before and it has really picked up speed. A lot more people seem to be interested in natural wines, which is great. I put it down to everyone being bored at home and willing to try out new things, rather than going out in groups and picking a “regular” wine which is more likely to please everyone.

What has Jonas been up to?
We’ve had quite a lot of requests for online tastings and vineyard tours, as well as live chats, so he’s been keeping up with that as well besides the work on the vineyard. 
I think digitally we’ve developed at a massive rate over the last three months. We’ve probably done as much as we would have in two years.

Are there any special projects you are working on at the moment? 
We are currently experimenting with some old vines where we are creating a sort of hybrid by connecting them to young, new vines. More on this to come!

We are also putting in a lot of effort in creating a really flourishing polyculture around our vines. We will be planting some lavender as well as trees and even vegetables, to create a balance so eventually the vineyard sustains itself. 


And how has it been climate wise for you so far?
Really good, we were lucky to avoid the frost this year. We’ve also had a really wet winter so the soils should have plenty of water reserves for summer. We’ll wait and see how it’s gonna go! 


 

Now in Stock

SPARKLING

NEW  2019 White Pet Nat - Silvaner, Pinot Blanc


WHITE

2018 Riesling Vom Berg - Riesling

NEW 2019 Wilder Satz
Grape varieties for 2019 are: Müller Thurgau 38%, Riesling 7%, Kerner 8%, Silvaner 8%, Chardonnay
18%, Weissburgunder 18%, Grauburgunder 3%. Müller Thurgau fermented in stainless steel with an addition of a tea brew inside the tank as well as Riesling grapes (maceration carbonique). Riesling 24h maceration, Kerner from 2018 was macerated for 10 days and 2019 which was also fermented tea-bag-style with Riesling. Silvaner, Chard, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris were short macerated overnight.

2018 Müller Thurgau Pur - Muller Thurgau

2018 Pinot Blanc Holy Chapel - Pinot Blanc

2018 Riesling Monastery - Riesling

RED

NEW  2019 Brand Red - Portugieser

WHOLESALE ONLY

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