My name is Fabian Kerbeck. Together with my wife Laura, I run KORE - Wein & Mehr. We are both firmly rooted in the Palatinate and also in viticulture. One side of each of our grandparents was involved in viticulture, too. Maintaining and preserving traditions and our culture is of great concern to us - this is our creativity and motivation source. We love living with and in nature, love fresh and healthy food and of course the right wine to go with it. We critically rethink and question our consumer behavior and at the same time enjoy thinking about where the raw materials for our work come from. I am a trained winemaker, studied viticulture & oenology in Geisenheim and, after a few stops in Germany and abroad, I now work part-time in my first training company in Deidesheim. While working, I am studying for a Master's degree in "Sustainable Change" in Birkenfeld and I am involved locally in the town and municipal councils. Laura studied International Wine Business in Geisenheim and was on the road in New Zealand, Italy and Burgundy before and during her studies. In 2014/15 she was Palatinate Wine Queen. After various stops in different areas of the wine industry, she now also works in a winery in Deidesheim and takes care of sales & administration. Besides our jobs in the wine world, we take care of our own wine! KORE is certainly a very small company, but it is run with all the more love by both of us. All the work is done by ourselves, from cultivation to harvesting and marketing. Laura's focus is on marketing and sales, mine is more on production, i.e. out in the vineyard and in the wine cellar. But we don't separate this so strictly at KORE, we both do all the work that comes up. It can also happen that I do the office, like right now ;). As for Laura, she's always out in the vineyards with us. We participate in CrowdFarming because we like to know where the products we consume come from. We like to use the platform ourselves to support producers directly. And why shouldn't CrowdFarmers also become Farmers? It is a pleasure to see positive feedback from Crowdfarmers, it motivates us in our daily work.

KORE unites our roots: Laura is from Hambach, where KORE's vineyard of origin is located, and Fabian is from Deidesheim, where we now work and live. Both places are not far from one another on the German Wine Route in the middle of the Palatinate, Germany's second largest wine-growing region. The region and the surroundings of our small vineyards are characterized by viticulture and tourism. Wine culture plays an important social, but also economic role in our region. From spring until late autumn, you can get to know the Palatinate's joie de vivre and its wines at countless wine festivals and events. In terms of landscape, we are located right on the edge of the Palatinate Forest-North Vosges nature reserve, the largest contiguous forest area in Central Europe. A real oasis! Many romantic castles, endless hiking trails, mountain bike trails and rustic Palatinate forest huts invite you to stay. In the winter of 2014, we decided to start "KORE" alongside our studies: a winemaker who had been managing the last family vineyard of Laura's family wanted to plant young vines and asked if we didn't want to manage the vineyard ourselves. We only thought for a moment and seized the opportunity! So we started with a small vineyard in the village of Hambach, and a year later, we added areas in the vicinity of Deidesheim. "Im Kore" was the former site name of our first vineyard in Hambach. The meaning of the word "Kore" is derived from the old German word "Kotten", better known today as quince. "Im Kore" therefore means something like "place with quince trees". Today, we cultivate almost one hectare of vineyards organically, fulfilling our dream of producing our own wines. Each drop bears our signature, is filled with love for detail and passion for the cultural asset wine. Our farm is in conversion to organic viticulture. Although we have been working organically since KORE was founded, it is only now that we have decided to become certified. With the beginning of the certification, the three-year long conversion phase officially begins. We work between the rows of vines with sown greenery: in spring a mixture of different legumes and crucifers (e.g. mallow, phacelia, various clovers, marigolds) promotes insect diversity and thus beneficial insects for viticulture To slow down the growth of the "weeds" close to the vines we cut them manually. For our vines, rainwater is enough and we do not need additional irrigation. Vines root very deeply and get the water they need from the soil. The drought of recent years, especially in the summer, is then reflected in a low yield. To improve the water storage capacity of the soil we use organic matter. During the manual harvest, we select the grapes and harvest only the fully ripe ones to make wine. The single sorted grape berries are cut on the ground and remain thereby within the natural cycle. After pressing, the pomace (berry skins, stalks, seeds) is taken back to the vineyards and used as a particularly good fertilizer. Most of the work for KORE is done by ourselves, Laura and Fabian. Fabian's dad supports us with manual labor in the vineyards and the whole family gets together for the grape harvest. KORE gives us both the freedom to organize our workday and makes us independent from employers.