Mythopia - Romaine & Hans-Peter Schmidt logo

Mythopia

Romaine & Hans-Peter Schmidt

14 33 9061 KM

When we decided, ten years ago, to found Mythopia, we challenged ourselves to transform the sterile vine into a wine garden. We wanted to see if it was necessary to sow death to harvest grapes and make wine from them. From the first day we have not only given up on synthetic products but we have mainly started to plant trees, shrubs, sow flowers, weed the rows, install beehives, place piles of stones and of wood for lizards, to plant fruits and vegetables between the rows of vines. From the outset, our main strategy consisted in increasing biodiversity, reactivating the soil, increasing resistance to pathogens, bringing balance to the terroir in order to gain quality in grape and aroma. We did not know if by applying these unusual and contrary methods to wine schools, we were going to lose ourselves in vain ideals or if we were going to succeed in making a wine worthy of all these efforts. In any case, it seemed to us worthwhile to try the experiment. Before embarking on this adventure, we had read Bouvard and Pécuchet well and at many times we recognized ourselves in them. Perhaps we were luckier than these two or so we simply learned better from our mistakes, in any case from the second year already a vegetative opulence was reborn. After such a short time, we were already discovering around twenty species of butterfly, countless grasshoppers, wild bees, sixty species of honey flowers while spreading vine diseases. Nature seemed to have waited only for our starting impulse to be able to regain its living complexity by itself. However, the vigor of the vines began to drop considerably giving a small amount of harvest although the quality of the wine consoled us for our poor harvest. It took us another four to five years to slowly master our high biodiversity vineyard. Thanks to our green fertilizers based on legumes, we started to control the vigor arriving at a harvest of 40 hl / ha. The vines were always becoming more resistant and required less treatment. Our main treatment products became nettle tea, horsetail, sage, compost extracts, whey, vine leaf ferments ... Today, in Mythopia, we find 68 species of butterfly, more than 180 species of plants and flowers, 30 trees per hectare, 200 m of hedges, organic hotspots, tomatoes, raspberries, blueberries, roses, potatoes, herbs aromatic, squash, onions, aronias, sea buckthorn. Hens and sheep roam between the vines. Mythopia has become a wine garden. In the cellar, our multiple attempts have allowed us to reduce and ultimately give up sulphiting. The increasing phenolic complexity makes our Pinots Noir more resistant to oxygen. Thus our wines are made only of grapes, a little mountain air and a large dose of microbial biodiversity naturally contained in the bloom of the grape. We mainly cultivate Pinot Noir as well as Fendant, Sylvaner, Rèze and other traditional grape varieties. At more than 800 m altitude and on very young limestone-schist soils and minerals (10,000 years ago, 1 km of ice still covered Mythopia), Pinot finds, once the soil is again biologically activated, one of its favorite terroir. Any theory, any ideal to its justification but it is only by the daily work in the vineyard and with the wine that we can better understand this subtle plant that is the vine and the grapes that make our wine alive. The Mythopia Estate seeks a harmonization of ecosystems in agriculture and develops a high degree of biodiversity so that the vines draw all their energy from the depths of the soil and give character and aromatic fullness to the grapes. This means that we take care that the vines are not simple alignments erected on a lifeless ground and impassively obeying the orders of machines. At Mythopia, mantises and crickets play in concert while dozens of kinds of butterflies fly freely and locusts jump on a veritable carpet of herbs and flowers, all bathed in the scent of oregano, thyme, absinthe and mint.

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Wines at Mythopia

Imago - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Imago
Pinot Noir
AOC Valais

@oneawines

Illusion - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Illusion
Pinot Noir

@jay

Vagabond - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Vagabond
Pinot Noir

@unicorn

Blue Velvet - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Blue Velvet
Pinot Noir
VDP
Lost Highway - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Lost Highway
Pinot Noir
VDP
Insoumis - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Insoumis
Pinot Noir
VDP
Dismissed - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Dismissed
Pinot Noir
VDP

Rosé Wines

Schiller - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Schiller
Chasselas, Pinot Noir
VDP

@punkit

Orange Wines

Jadis - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Jadis
Fendant
VDP

@filippospat

Finito - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Finito
Johannisberg
VDP
Wild Geboren - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Wild Geboren
Fendant
VDP
Disobedience - Mythopia - romaine-hans-peter-schmidt
WINE MADE BY A NATURAL WINEMAKER
Disobedience
Fendant
VDP

White Wines

No white wines at the moment.

Sparkling wines

No sparkling wines at the moment.

 

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