Top winemakers provide insight: Here’s why leading wineries work with horses

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World-class wineries have been using horses in their vineyard work for many years. We asked two leading wineries on two different continents whether this is just a marketing tactic or a sustainable and future-proof way of working.

Swiss Reto Erdin (56) is the owner of Bordeaux winery Domaine Léandre-Chevalier, while Frenchman Christophe Baron (53) is creating worldwide excitement with his Horsepower wines from the American Walla Walla Valley. In their interview with Blick, the duo gives detailed information about their work with horses for the first time.

Blick: What motivated you to integrate horses into the business?
Reto Erdin: The previous owner, Dominique Léandre Chevalier, was already working with horses. This tradition in our winery dates back to the 19th century. Working with horses is also why I was introduced to the winery almost 20 years ago; because I am also a big horse lover and have been actively involved in tournament sports and horse breeding for many years. The advantage of working with horses lies in careful use of the ground. Heavy tractors with thin tires used in traditional viticulture cause serious compaction of the soil and the death of many soil organisms. You can feel and even smell the difference when you hold a handful of soil under your nose.

Christopher Baron: I can trace my passion for horses back to my childhood in the Champagne region of France, where my family had worked since 1677. My grandfather rode draft horses until 1957, when he invested in a tractor and sent his last horse, Bijou (Jewel), off to a well-deserved retirement. I was born in 1970, so I wasn’t there to see this change for myself, but I heard exciting stories from family members about their desperate wartime efforts to hide the horses from the occupying German army. As a young boy, I remember admiring the majestic white Percheron horses grazing in the pastures of the rolling hills. There was a lady in my village who rode one of these. If you are a child and you see this magnificent animal, I am always fascinated. I knew from the beginning that if I had my own vineyard, I would draw horses.

Can you explain the specific roles horses are used in the vineyard and how they are successful in those roles?
Christopher Baron: Each horse pulls a wrought steel stubble, a type of agricultural implement that has changed little over the centuries. I buy my stubble shares from Equivinum and Vitimeca, small workshops in France. Each weighs approximately 40 pounds and can be equipped with a number of interchangeable attachments that represent different strategies for controlling weeds in different locations. The horses wear handmade horseshoes forged from 1/2-inch flat steel, which they must wear to move around the rocky alluvial fan where the vines are planted. Hard work is what keeps my draft horses and their teammates busy during the growing months, especially in rainy years like 2022.

Reto Erdin: We mainly till the spaces between the vine rows so that the soil stays nice and loose and can absorb rainwater better. In compacted soils, rainwater quickly flows off the surface, causing washing around the vines, and the vines suddenly become suspended in the air until the point of grafting. We also use tillage to prevent unwanted weeds from appearing.

How many horses make up your horse team?
Reto Erdin: We currently have two fully trained horses in use. We also train two young horses.

Christopher Baron: Five pieces in total, three Belgian and two Percheron.

How does the use of horses impact sustainability and environmental practices at your wineries?
Christopher Baron: Farming this way with horses is incredibly difficult and extremely expensive; I could buy a new Ferrari every year for the cost of maintaining my stables! But ultimately it is of great benefit to the vineyard. Heavy machinery use causes soil compaction, which damages soil health, but a team of people and animals moving slowly between rows creates an open soil structure ideal for vines. Team members are better at spotting insects or potential management problems because they are literally four inches from the vines, walking along each row of vines all day long, and doing so several times a year: each pair travels 44 miles per pass and walks in 13 passes. Year. Horses are also better at moving through rocky soil than tractors and cause much less damage; We don’t tend to see broken poles or broken vines. Using horsepower also ensures that our carbon footprint is very low (the only emissions from horses are manure) and is an important part of our long-term plan to adapt to climate change and preserve this beautiful landscape for future generations.

Reto Erdin: We were the first winery in Bordeaux to be recognized as a CO by the Myclimate Foundation₂– awarded impartially. By replacing tractors with horses we reduce diesel consumption and therefore CO2₂-emissions. We need horse manure as a natural fertilizer that closes the cycle again. This allows us to further reduce our ecological footprint.

What do you think the future of viticulture will be like with horse power? Do you think it will continue to gain popularity in the wine industry?
Reto Erdin: As much as I enjoy it, I don’t think working with horses will become much more popular. The financial situation of most private wine producers is very difficult at the moment. Additionally, wine consumption is decreasing worldwide. That’s why I fear that vineyards will continue to move towards automation. There are already large farms with driverless, GPS-controlled autonomous machines to cultivate the soil, tend the vines, and harvest grapes. In addition, drones are used to apply plant protection products in order to further reduce costs. The wheel of time is irreversible. Therefore, I believe that wineries like ours, which rely entirely on horses and do not use them as symbols of sympathy in photo ops when visiting journalists, will remain the exception.

Christopher Baron: Biodynamic farming with horses is an approach that is gaining renewed prominence in the vineyards of some of the world’s most famous producers, such as the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti winery in Burgundy. A bottle of DRC Romanée-Conti Grand Cru can be worth over $20,000; In 2019, a single bottle of the 1945 vintage wine reached a record price of $558,000 at Sotheby’s auction. Our Horsepower wines are nowhere near that astronomical price tag and only 2,000 cases are produced per year. I would like to see more wineries use horses to keep old traditions alive, minimize impact on the land, and create high-quality wines that are almost impossible to achieve with mechanized farming.

Source : Blick