Alois Lageder, based in the Alto Adige region of northern Italy, has released its first wine since becoming organic and biodynamic certified in 2024. 

At a trade tasting held by Hallgarten Wines – which added Alois Lageder to its portfolio this year – marketing and communications manager Helena Lageder led the audience through the brand’s history and introduced the newest wine. 

The new addition is the 2024 vintage Misto Mare, a white wine made with a mixture of grape varietals. 

Combining over 14 different grape varietals, both white and red, the wine aims to capture the winery’s ethos of diversity and is sourced from multiple sites and altitudes with different levels of sugar, acidity and ripeness. 

“It’s an evolving wine,” Lageder explained. “Next year might be 20 varieties; in three years’ time it might be ten or five. So, it’s something that will always change.” 

Vinified in stainless steel, it is an entry-level wine with a focus on freshness and easy drinking. 

A tool for connection, Lageder said that the creation of Misto Mare opened “a door for new collaborations and new partnerships” with smaller farmers in the region. 

All the partners are either already organic and biodynamic themselves or in the process of conversion. 

Becoming organic and biodynamic 

On becoming certified, like many wineries, Lageder explained that they were practicing many of the values of organic and biodynamic farming before achieving official status. 

“The philosophy was brought in by my grandmother. She worked in a vegetable garden in a very natural and biodynamic way, and my father grew up with this philosophy. 

“He always had this dream to convert the vineyards to biodynamic farming, and so we started those first experiments in the eighties and nineties. Though, mentalities were very different back then. It was a lot about industrialisation and quantity rather than quality.” 

Today, Lageder explained, their focus is breaking free from monoculture and building biodiversity. This can be done through livestock: “For example, we have oxen who graze from the end of our harvest until it starts blooming again. That way we have natural fertiliser.” 

The family also utilises other techniques such as cover cropping and planting fruit trees to encourage wider agricultural diversity. 

If much of this was already in place, why did it take so long for Alois Lageder to become certified? 

The answer, Lageder said, goes back to partnerships. As a sixth-generation winery, many of Alois Lageder’s vintner partners have spanned multiple generations. 

“We work with farmers, and it’s a tight collaboration based on trust,” Lageder noted. “There’s no written contract. It’s based on a handshake every year, going all the way back to my grandfather.” 

It was important to the winery to keep these relationships thriving. However, many of the partners did not align with organic and biodynamic processes and convincing them took time. 

“We wanted to motivate the farmers and make them understand, which was a process of about fifteen years,” Lageder said, noting that they needed to see for themselves rather than being forced. 

“Of course, twenty years ago we could have given them more money to do it, but we wanted the process to be based on trust. So, we waited.” 

Now, the winery’s patience has paid off, and Alois Lageder has managed to maintain that culture of community while also reaching its organic and biodynamic goals – a happy outcome all round. 

Image credit: Letizia Cigliutti