Changing ideas....

Here is something I had forgotten totally to tell you about, I was reminded about it today on my walk in the hills.

A few weeks back I was walking and noticed that the many wine growers on the hill where I was walking were ripping out their grape vines...just tearing out the entire growing area. Pulling up the support poles, pulling down the wires which the vines trail along and physically tearing out the vines themselves. What would make them do this?

I watched as a mother and son skillfully and methodically pulled down the poles and lined them up obviously for another purpose. I could not help but to ask myself why? When I saw an opportunity and the two had taken a pause from this grueling work, next to their basket lunch, I simply asked...Why? The woman laughed and said it was a new idea, a new way, a better way to plant and harvest the grapes.

She looked from her lunch and pointed at the many rows of grapes at the bottom on the Wein bergen (wine hill) and showed me that no longer were the grapes planted in rows going from the top to the bottom but they are now planted along the side of the hill, following it's contour. Doing it this way makes everything easier. No longer did the grower have to trudge up a hill to maintain the crop or have difficulty maintaining his foot hold while picking. Good point I thought.

It is interesting to me how things change. Who thought of this after centuries of wine growers who always planted the grapes down the mountain instead of across....

Everything seems to be changing with the weather, I have been hearing stories of red wine being produced in Germany now...and rather well. For as long as I know white wines were produced here in Germany because the climate was best for them and reds were normally produced in Southern, warmer climates. Germany had the rocky chalk soil needed but not the long hot dry summers the reds loved.

Darwin's theory at it's finest...adapt and grow....change is not only good...it is necessary. One must evolve.

So, even though it breaks my heart to see a timeless landscape change and hundred year old grape varieties ripped from their earthy beds...I remind myself...embrace change Laura...just embrace it.