Looking for an alternative

Anyone who talks about the Castelatsch wine estate in Cengles, Val Venosta, must first talk about construction. The construction business, that is. After all, the owner of the wine estate, Werner Schönthaler, has a background in construction and has been researching ecological construction materials for a decade. “It has always been our goal to find alternatives for existing construction methods, so we started producing bricks made of hemp and lime,” explains Werner Schönthaler.
This construction material is sustainable through and through—and it was also used to build the Hof Castelatsch estate located on the slopes above Cengles. However, sustainability is not only skin-deep here: Werner Schönthaler pursues his agricultural activities with the same approach (and passion) which he already applied to his attempts to revolutionize the construction business.
And so the values at Hof Castelatsch reflect all those buzzwords that have become more and more popular since the climate crisis: future-friendly, for example, or health and well-being. And these values are, in turn, reflected in viticulture. After all, it is very important to Schönthaler to produce his wines in harmony with nature; in other words, sustainably …
… while following his own rules. His disinterest in conventional methods, which he already demonstrated in the construction business, also extends to wine, prompting him to tread on different paths. His grape varieties are all fungus-resistant (PIWI). His Eschkolot wine, for example, is a spontaneously fermented cuvée containing the Solaris, Muscaris, and Souvignier Gris grape varieties. And marble powder. Different paths, remember?