Wein Goutte
in words
Like every good story, it starts with two people falling in love. It happened fast, like a train in motion. We shook hands one September morning, and it sealed the next chapter of our lives right then and there.
This was harvest time in 2018 and the Burgenland sun shone hot and dry.
Before September comes
Upon our first conversation, we were surprised by how our life stories shared uncanny similarities, despite moving through life on different continents. We both had studied cooking and hospitality as our first career path. Food was our earliest love, and we remain chefs at heart up to this day.
We had worked our way through all aspects of the food business for over a decade, from catering to Michelin starred establishments. The lifestyle finally took its toll on us both, and we orchestrated a career pivot into wine. The two of us had also lived in multiple countries, an unpredictable nomadic lifestyle in which most of our possessions fitted in a car trunk.
At the time of our meeting:
Emily was the Wine Director of Restaurant Candide in Montreal, heading the sommelier team and a successful wine program.
Christoph had recently completed his last year of university, studying Viticulture and Oenology in Neustadt in the Pfalz and was newly employed as a cellar master in Burgenland.
A few days into harvest 2018, while slurping a luscious bowl of tomato pasta washed down with dark rosé, we already knew this was the beginning of something that was much more than a harvest fling.
A winery is born
The first years of our project were like a feverish dream. Emily rewired her work at Candide to be able to work remotely and moved to Europe, Christoph continued his job as a cellar master, making all shades of Blaufränkisch. We made our first vintage as a négoce in 2019 while we lived on the Austro-Hungarian border, with purchased organic grapes.
Wein Goutte was born.
We got married during harvest, one year to the date after we had met. A few punchdowns on the reds, and off to city hall we went.
While we enjoyed our time in this area, we always knew it would not be our forever place. The pandemic hit, and things accelerated greatly. We were separated for many long months, while Emily was stuck in Quebec, waiting for air traffic to resume. When we finally were reunited, the decision to look for our own vines to farm became a priority.
The tale of how we ended up in Germany is part of Goutte lore; the rule was to live in a country where one of us speaks the native language, for administrative reasons (making wine is mostly paperwork, if you don’t already know). Languages that were eligible were English, French and German. We quickly went down the list: Quebec was out of the budget, so were Switzerland and England, Emily had declared she would never live in France again after spending half of her twenties working as a chef in Paris.
Germany was the winning ticket.
Agricultural Blind Date
Linda and Erhard Hassold contacted us after seeing a classified ad we posted on a wine business forum. We thought that reverse engineering our dreams was worth a shot; instead of looking at ads trying to find what we need, why shouldn’t we just publish what we are dreaming of and see what would happen? Worse case scenario was losing 25€ for the ad price.
This was early 2021, so visiting the farm prior to making a decisions would have been difficult, given all the pandemic restrictions in place at the time.
So, we took a leap of faith. Our common belongings did not fit into a car trunk anymore, so we borrowed a friend’s van, and drove to Hüttenheim for the first time.
During our phone meetings with the Hassolds, we had been delighted to discover that they had been organic for three decade at this point, and that they had hybrids vineyards that were well-established, some of them planted over 20 years ago and in excellent shape.
We gave our unconventional arrangement with Linda and Erhard a try-out period of one year…and things worked out!
Since summer 2025, Wein Goutte has officially taken over the Hof. We were passed down vineyards that were balanced and well taken care of, and we strive to continue to do so with the utmost care and respect.
The Franconian Era
Both of us are transplants to the region of Franken (Emily is from Quebec and Christoph is from Württemberg), so we had a steep learning curve ahead of us when we moved here. Out of the thirteen grape varieties that are present on the farm, we had previously worked with one only: Pinot Blanc. All the other ones were new to us.
If you are curious what they all are, here’s a complete list: Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Meunier, Bacchus, Calardis Blanc, Muscaris, Johanniter, Müller-Thurgau, Silvaner, Domina, Regent, Monarch, and Cabertine. We have since given up the Domina vineyards and we have planted some Souvignier gris for a total of 4,5ha divided in 19 small plots.
So we set out on a journey lead by curiosity to discover what all these varieties had to say. The first few years we vinified every variety separately, to pay close attention. Mistakes were made, but we were proud of what we put out there in the world. Our labels changed for the first three vintages, until we found a style that would be enough of a common thread to reapply the same label for two vintages in a row.
As these words are being typed, we are nearing the beginning of our 6th vintage in Franken, and despite now having a clearer idea of how our wines will be made, our approach in the cellar remains the same: keep things simple, work smarter rather than harder, adjust lightly according to vintage conditions (level of nutrients and water) and make wines that will go down easy alongside a table full of food. This is the exact point where you can see how our first career has merged into our current life.
At harvest time, we pick grapes by hand in the morning, then take the afternoon to process them by either pressing, foot stomping or desteming. The juice will ferment naturally and will then be transferred to its final container for aging, usually a used 500L barrels or some stainless if we are tight on space. A short maceration may occur for some whites, as well as for Regent which is the color of a starless night when extracted for too long. We use a few machines and a lot of muscle work.
And now we are slowy moving towards the next chapter of our lives, becoming hôteliers! Check out the section about Goutte Haus, our guesthouse…coming soon!
