My installation as a winemaker on the Côtes de Toul in 2015 at the age of 30 took place outside family setting, by creating my domain after different agricultural, agrifood, and vineyards in Alsace and Germany. I only really became interested in the world of wine from my BTS viti / oeno in 2009. When one is on small estates and selling their own bottles, there is a very complete and rich aspect of the profession which is very pleasant because it is often lacking in the world general agriculture, where we often limit ourselves to producing raw materials, and where the processing is very specialized. I arrived without really preconceived ideas in this business, with just a big inclination towards culture in AB, which rather oriented my professional experiences as an employee towards organic and biodynamic domains. For the vineyard part, my work has obviously been done in AB since 2015, officially in certification since 2017. The culture of the vine is currently the part that I favor the most in my working time (also because the estate is currently 4 ha, including 1.5 in young vines and which I take care of almost alone), and it is also the one that in my opinion requires the most attention. Since my installation, I have started an almost annual questioning of my wine work to try to work best with the nature surrounding the vine, while trying to produce enough grapes and wine to be able to make a living from this profession. This questioning was fueled by work as a viticultural technician animating a group of Lorraine winegrowers from 2015 to 2019, by numerous training courses and bibliography. After 6 vintages, my philosophy and my practices in the vineyard have changed a lot, and the current climate change will most certainly amplify this need and desire for permanent adaptation. The vast majority of my vines are located in an agroforestry type environment, which I want to maintain and promote because it is also the guarantor of a balance that is sorely lacking in all monocultures. Today, this allows me to treat my vines very little, (approx. 500g of copper metal / year / ha and very low doses of sulfur) for yields which are finally starting to go back to the vines in production that I converted to organic (around 30 HL / ha currently for a density of about 5500 vines / ha), and young plantations which are just beginning to give their first fruits. A lot of work, pruning, sowing green manures, treatments, harvests ... are done while respecting the right lunar cycles. I am attracted to biodynamics in the strict sense of the term, but I prefer currently focus on very “down to earth” agronomics concepts and yet essential. I work a lot by hand and limit the passages and the use of the tractor. The vinification of the grapes harvested by hand in small cases followed the same thinking as the work in the vineyard. I have never been very interventionist in winemaking, and by the force of financial and practical things, cellar equipment has been fairly artisanal and basic from the start: a manual crusher, three ratchet presses, second-hand barrels, a few vats with movable caps and a small 230v pump. I first reproduced in 2015 my "salaried" and "schoolgirl" winemaking experiences. For the white wines and rosés: sulphiting of the musts at 3g / HL, static settling then spontaneous fermentation in barrels or in vats, light sulphiting at the end of fermentation, then medium-tight filtration on plates thanks to a loaned filter, sulphiting and bottling. Ditto for the red but without sulphiting of the must and with only coarse filtration. In 2016, simplification, more filtration of the reds and a more limited sulphiting in general, then comes 2017 and the total cessation of filtrations, the end of sulphiting of the reds, and the continuity of the decline on others. I had no personal interest in putting SO2 in my wines, and on the strength of my solo experience, without an oenologist, by succeeding for three vintages in producing wines without "problems", I continue down the path. At the same time, the wines are sold, at the beginning in a commercial circuit made a little from day to day, in the sandstone of the wind and the ideas that germinate. I am not particularly familiar with the world of natural wine, but the first contacts with wine merchants in this vein Take me there more and more. This is not to displease me because I find people there passionate, at all levels, and who for many are more sensitive to almost artisanal work and made to measure supplied to the vineyard and in the cellar. Finding myself thus also a little stamped "nature" makes me realize that I must persevere down this path if I want to be honest with the people who buy and drink my wines. It also becomes for me an obvious continuity of my wine approach. Comes 2018 and its hot weather in the northern part of France, confidence in me too much marked, enormous maturities, almost no sulfur, a more distant follow-up to vinification. A little reminder after analysis: lactic bite, red that goes to the distillery, rises of volatile and a cuvée de gris that no longer wants to ferment, that I try to catch up by disaster in March with a special dry yeast fermentation stop that will not change nothing... Given the small volume produced annually, the lesson is a bit expensive, but it puts in place for the following vintages. 2019 and 2020 were managed differently, especially during the harvest where we had to hire more to bring in the grapes earlier, over a shorter period, because the global warming is becoming more and more palpable every year. Without going too far on 2020 which is nevertheless taking a good direction to date, despite a barrel certainly daubé, it is rather a success with now the entire cellar that respects a specifications without input or very little sulphite: 15 mg of SO2 / L on must only for whites and rosés in direct pressing then generally nothing. Just surveillance, a little empiricism and tools to arrive at the only racking which takes place on the day of the bottle, made by gravity with an old Clemens-Fiamat capping machine. It's also a vintage where I took the opportunity to buy some local grapes in AB, something that I refused myself until now but which will allow me to supplement a little in volume my cellar, because the young vines suffered from the drought. I also temporarily returned to my domain a non-organic plot recovered the day before the harvest, which is now officially in conversion. This on behalf of my trainee, so that he can learn his skills in winemaking and especially because his company was not yet created in September. A cuvée (Chimère) will be bottled under the name of the Viking Tree, the others will be bottled under its brand. Until now, my modest career as a winemaker has made me understand so far that important concerns in the cellar came from imbalances in the vineyard. Hence the importance for me to work all year round as close as possible to the plant when you want a vinification that is the simpler and certainly as close to its terroir as possible.