"The Guebwiller vineyard has a unique characteristic look in Alsace. Defying a coarse topography, generations of winemakers competed with ingenuity to cultivate these invaluable vineyards: stairs in stones to move from one terrace to another, half-moon stones, crossed by a wooden peg to plant a last vine below the low wall, inserting vines horizontally...
All these efforts are rose by the search for a wine of exceptional quality in a harsh land with poor and sandy soil.
The phylloxera crisis, accentuated in Alsace by the change in nationality of the region, resulted in a drop of the vine in Guebwiller by smallholders. Coming from a family of industrialists, Ernest Schlumberger (1885-1954) acquired relentlessly the abandoned plots and replanted them horizontally and terraced the overall vineyards, thereby creating the largest domaine in Alsace (all in one block)."
