The valley of the Ahr River (known as the "Ahrtal" is a major wine-producing part of Germany.  On Saturday, I hiked the "Rotweinwanderweg" ("Red Wine Hiking Path") about 13 miles, from the village of Altenahr to Ahrweiler.

If you are thinking that there is no way Jon really climbed up these hills, my sore legs will tell you that yes I did.  Several times, in fact, as the trail would wind up and down the hills.

The Ahrtal is in a region of small mountains known as the "Eifel".  These are the same mountains that are called the "Ardennes" in French and English.  The Battle of the Bulge in WWII happened in the Ardennes.

Nobody wants to drink wine from grapes that have been sprayed with lots of chemicals.  While some of the growers do use conventional pesticides, in general they use less-invasive techniques.  For example, most of the grapevines had this little plastic vials of pheromones on them, which, according to the signs along the side of the trail, drive away the male moths.

Who knew that female moths had such huge breasts?  :-)

A few of the vineyards do use herbicides, as you can see on this picture, which was taken right on the property line of two vineyards.

There were quite a few of these little chapels along the side of the trail.  I suppose that they were originally placed there so that the people working in the vineyards could pray at certain times of the day.

I mean, these hills are steep!  I suppose that, if you work in the vineyards, you do everything you can to minimize the number of times you have to go up and down the hill!

These hills are STEEP!  But that's part of the reason why the vineyards are here. Germany is far enough north that it would be very hard to grow grapes here.  The steep, south-facing side of the valley faces into the sun in the summer, making it possible to grow grapes.  (You'll notice that there are no vineyards on the opposite side of the valley.)

I had never really thought about it, but it is an enormous amount of work to haul fertilizer, chemicals, and soil up these hills (and, for that matter, to haul bunches of grapes back down the hill in the Fall).

Some of the farms have "Monorack" systems, like the rail that you see in this picture running up the hill.  There are systems of baskets that can ride on this rail, up and down the hill.  I don't think that it is in any way "powered", however--I'll pretty sure that someone is still just pushing the basket.

And in the other vineyards... well, I guess it is all just done with muscle power.