Schreckbichl Winery
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When 26 winegrowers from Schreckbichl near Eppan decided to found a co-operative in 1960, they were considered rebels, but when they began to focus strictly on quality viticulture under the leadership of Luis Raifer in the 1980s, they became pioneers.
Anyone travelling through South Tyrol today can hardly imagine that this region was bitterly poor in the 1960s. The winegrowers were doing badly and were largely dependent on wine merchants, who only paid low prices for hectolitres. In addition, viticulture was geared towards quantity rather than quality, with the result that South Tyrol became synonymous with the cheapest, sweetest litres of Vernatsch, known for example as "Kalterer See Auslese". In 1960, 26 winegrowers from Schrekbichl - Colterenzio in Italian - near Eppan founded their own co-operative to counteract this dependency and from then on were considered rebels who broke away from the previous system. At the same time, they were already beginning to pay more attention to quality, but this only came about thanks to the experience and work of the now legendary Luis Raifer. He became managing director of the cooperative in 1979 and came back transformed after a study trip to California.
Raifer, a winegrower himself, recognised the potential of South Tyrol to produce quality wines and so he turned his own Lafóa vineyard into an experimental vineyard, where he grubbed up the Vernatsch and planted Cabernet Sauvignon and later Sauvignon Blanc. Here there was significantly less yield for higher quality grapes and higher quality wine. The best barrels were purchased for the Cabernet and a new type of South Tyrolean wine was created.
This was the starting signal for sustainable changes and a standard for today's 300 members of the Schreckbichl winery, a district of Girlan, whose vineyards and wines were praised as early as 1200 under the name "vinum schrechpuhlensis". The wines benefit from the climate and the soils between the Mediterranean and the Alps with mineral soils from the last ice age. Today, classic South Tyrolean wines are produced here, combining the warmth of the Mediterranean with the coolness of the Alps.
photos: Schreckbichl Winery
