This week was Homecoming for Stuttgart High, and the kids had a fun and busy week dressing up and celebrating during Spirit Week!
Tuesday night, Ryan cooked us one of his fish, the salmon, from the camping trip the week before. He baked it with lemons, garlic, and chives, and it was so good. It was so sweet of him to cook for us.
Friday, I was off work and was able to secure a shift working in the vineyards of Esslingen. I have wanted to do this each fall since we moved here and learned about the opportunity, but my days off never lined up with the days it was run. This year was finally my year!
The grape growing process is very precise, and the grapes are only considered suitable for wine for a few days. If they are picked too early, they are sour, and if they are picked too late, they are too sweet and become too alcoholic. The vintners only determine that a vine is ready to be picked a day or two before. For this reason, pickers have to be pretty fluid, as the process doesn’t really allow them to hire workers when they don’t know the schedule. Vintners mainly rely on family members, friends, and volunteers recruited via Facebook posts to help them harvest the grapes.
We had to arrive for our grape picking shift by 8 a.m., and we met the vintner, Gottfried Bader, at the Teamwerk Esslingen winery. While we waited for all the volunteers to arrive, he gave us a short tour around the winery and gave us the background on The Teamwerk Cooperative.
The cooperative was founded in the 1980s by around 50 grape growers in the hills of Esslingen. They were each too small to compete with any large winemaker and would have been put out of business by the rising costs of agriculture and running the wineries. Together, they can grow enough grapes to sustain one grape processing and wine facility while sharing the costs. All the families can maintain their smaller plots of land instead of selling to more giant wine corporations.
The current winery was built in 2020 to replace three smaller ones. The cooperative decides which grapes are ready to harvest and then calls for all grapes of that type to be brought to the winery on certain days. On the Friday I was working, they called for Black Reisling, so that’s what we would pick.
When all the volunteers arrived, Gottfried took us in his truck up to the vines we would pick that day.
Gottfried gave us a quick tutorial on picking the grapes with the clippers and determining which to keep and throw out. Most grapes are good to keep, regardless of whether they are soft or not. If you are unsure whether some are too soft, just take a bite and taste them 😊! Anything with a white frost on it could be mold and needs to be thrown out. Due to the climate, the vines are tough to keep mold-free, so having some is usually inevitable.
Picking grapes is hard work! You have to stand on a steep slope, cradling your bucket between your ankles and leaning over to clip the grapes. It was also so sticky! The black riesling grape is particularly sweet, and our hands and arms were coated in a sticky syrup in no time. One picker, who had worked on Wednesday when they were harvesting white grapes, said it wasn’t sticky at all, but they had to pick on a slope so steep that some people slipped down the hill several times. Your experience can really vary depending on the type of grape you are working on.
We ended up being short some workers that day. Not as many people signed up (school was released early that day), and two who did sign up could not make it due to car trouble. The Bader called upon family and friends to fill the labor gaps, with people stopping in and out to pick for a couple of minutes or the whole time. It was really cool to see cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends stopping by as they had time, clearing one row and then heading off again. No amount of help is too little, and many small contributions made the work go by much faster.
It took us about four hours to clear that day’s section. By the time we were done, we had filled the tractor three times. Gottfried said this was a great wine-growing season, and he usually only gets one or two tractor loads from that size section.
When we cleared all the vines and cleaned off our extremely sticky hands, Gottfried’s wife served us lunch right in the vineyard. We had maultaushen suppe and potato and cucumber salad, paired with rosé from Teamwerk.
When it was time, we were all paid with bottles of wine, and Gottfried’s brother, Rudy, drove us back to the winery through the vineyards in his convertible- a very beautiful end to our work shift!
When I got home, no one was there, and I was exhausted! I headed straight to bed for a much-needed nap and could barely wake myself up when it was time to head to the high school for the Homecoming football game.
It was an exciting game against the team from the UK, Lakenheath, and luckily, Stuttgart won. They have not lost a game since their season opener, so things are looking up for the playoffs!
On Saturday morning, we attempted to take Ryan shopping for new skis. Not surprisingly, the stores still aren’t selling skis, though. We took Ryan back home, but the weather was so beautiful that Matt and I headed to Nagold, a town in the Black Forest, for a hike and lunch.
I drove through Nagold last weekend on my way to drop off and pick up Ryan from Altensteig and was eager to come back and explore. A castle ruin overlooks the town from a mountaintop, and the mountain is bordered by the Nagold River and a viaduct bridge.
We hiked up to Burg Hohennahold, the castle ruin overlooking the town. Matt had the really wise foresight to pack some snacks and the Teamwerk wine I had earned on Friday for my work and we enjoyed an impromptu picnic at the peak. There was a wedding happening within the castle ruin so that was fun to watch.
The weather was so nice, and we know it won’t be like that for long, so we are soaking it up.
We hiked back down and walked around the half-timbered old town. It was really cute- definitely somewhere we would come back to!
We did a little shopping and then had lunch at a pizzeria on the square. I had my favorite meal again—mozzarella caprese, Margherita pizza, and an Aperol Spritz!
We headed back home in the afternoon and had time for a short nap before helping the kids get ready for the Homecoming dance. Unfortunately, Brooklyn was scheduled to work at Pizza Hut, but luckily, they let her leave a little bit early so she could get ready (super fast) and make it to the dance on time.
We drove them up to the school and Ryan ditched us as soon as we got there. Brooklyn found Kenneth and we got some pictures of them before heading home for a movie and to wait for them to call us for pick up. They had a great time, and I’m so glad that they could experience Homecoming together!
Magically, Sunday was another beautiful weather day. This weekend, the annual Wein Safari in the Unterturkheim Hills (near Esslingen) was held. I went last year with a friend, and we had so much fun that I was eager to do it again. Brooklyn and Ryan were both tired from the dance the night before so we let them sleep in and then headed to the vineyards.
We met two other couples for the safari, where you are given a passport for €20 and must get stamps from the “Big Five” Stuttgart wineries. The stamps are received after having a glass of wine at each station, which is decorated in honor of one of the Big Five animals.
Each station sold its own food to pair with the wines. We had lunch at the first stop, Weingut Zaiss. The theme of that stop was the Tiger, so they were serving “Spare ‘Rips.'” Get it? 😂
We hiked to the rest of the stations, snacking along the way. Once we were done, the total distance covered was about 3 kilometers. It was a blast!
Once we were done, we weren’t ready for the day to be over, so we all went to Da Pippo’s for dinner to close out the day. It was a fantastic day to end an awesome week.
Gilcrests Abroad 