Have you ever wondered just how much work is contained in a single glass of wine? From pruning the vines, removing leaves, pest control, and harvesting up to the actual making of the wine and its aging at the winery. And Alto Adige wines are completely worked by hand. At the five thousand winegrowers, some ten thousand employees see to it that every action counts, making those tiny but essential differences.

With a grape growing area of just 5,400 hectares (13,300 acres), Alto Adige’s available space is relatively small. But every hectare involves 400 to 600 hours of work every year. Regardless of whether Alto Adige’s winegrowers are members of a cooperative, grape suppliers to another winery, owners of their own estate winery, or belong to the Independent Winegrowers, they are bound together by a common goal: producing wines of the highest quality sustainably and with the use of a great deal of work by hand. Within that context, the three forms of operation have always worked hand in hand with each other. The passion and commitment can be tasted in every Alto Adige wine. The solidarity of the winegrowers, the great support that they mutual-ly give each other, and the continuous exchange of knowledge are the essential strengths of the Alto Adige wine industry, as confirmed by the numerous awards year after year.

But although the community in Alto Adige is essential for success, it still leaves plenty of maneuvering room for individuality and one’s own ideas. Thus there are winegrowers in Alto Adige who distinguish themselves by their special bottle aging, while others devote themselves more to the experience of wine in connection with art or architecture, and for yet others, great emphasis is placed in particular on the idea of biodiversity and sustainability.

This variety within the unity is what makes Alto Adige s wine industry so strong.