Company history Kiefer & Sester

1937

The origins of our vine nursery date back to 1937, when Anton Kiefer grafted the first vines for his own use following the devastating phylloxera disaster. The cause was phylloxera, which was introduced to Europe from North America in the 19th century. At that time, European vines were propagated rootless, which made them extremely susceptible to root phylloxera. Phylloxera causes serious damage to the root system of European vines and leads to the death of the plants in a very short time. The rapid spread of phylloxera and the initial lack of effective control methods brought European viticulture to the brink of extinction.

The realisation that American wild vines had the necessary natural resistance to phylloxera marked the beginning of the use of these vines as rootstock for grafting. In the first third of the 20th century, Europeans began to fight phylloxera organically by planting grafted vines and Anton Kiefer was one of the pioneers of this revolutionary method.

The pictures show Anton and Rosa Kiefer at a somewhat older age. They ran the farm as a classic, mixed agricultural business with livestock farming, arable farming, forestry, viticulture and fruit growing from 1930 to 1965.

1965

The passion for viticulture was passed on to the next generation of the Kiefer family. The son of Bottenau mayor and farmer Anton Kiefer and his wife Rosa, Josef Kiefer was born on 26 February 1936. After growing up on the Bottenau farm, he attended the agricultural school and the farmer's school in Tiengen. He then worked on his parents' farm.
In 1965, Josef and his wife Meta, born Schwab, walked down the aisle. He also took over the farm from his parents and gave up livestock farming in favour of fruit growing and viticulture.
In the same year, Josef Kiefer was one of the first in the region to start commercial vine grafting and integrated this as a permanent branch of the existing wine and fruit growing enterprise. He recognised the market for grafted vines in the Ortenau region of Baden, a wine-growing region with a long tradition and numerous awards. In the first year, 15,000 grafted vines were grafted by hand using tongue pruning.

1971

In addition to the grafted vines, Josef Kiefer and his wife Meta produced grapes for the Oberkirch Winzergenossenschaft, strawberries, raspberries and currants. Forestry was also practised on the farm. The crops were cultivated by very arduous manual labour on steep vineyards in Bottenau. The picture also shows our farm in 1971.

1985

Within a few years, the vine grafting company made a name for itself both regionally and internationally by selling grafted vines to protect against phylloxera. In 1985, Josef Kiefer decided to expand vine grafting and strawberry cultivation. As a result, the vine nursery and strawberry areas were moved to flat fields in the Renchtal valley and the steep vineyards were planted with vines and rootstock parent gardens. New methods and techniques made the work much easier. The picture shows Josef Kiefer grafting the vines with the first vine grafting machine.

1997

To secure the future and succession of the business, the Kiefers brought Ralf Sester, a trained master fruit grower, into the company in 1997. Together they founded Kiefer & Sester GbR, which Ralf's wife Simone Sester joined two years later. The company was run jointly by the Kiefer and Sester families for ten years. 

2009

2018

Due to the strong growth of our company in previous years, we reached the limits of our capacity, which restricted the further development of the business. At the same time, good accommodation and catering for our employees is very important to us. For this reason, we made a conscious decision in 2017 to tackle a second construction phase.
This investment included the construction of two floors of staff accommodation, which offer spacious, bright and well-equipped shared rooms, modern sanitary facilities and a spacious common room with a kitchen. A machine hall with workshop, a small distillery and a new woodchip heating system, which heats the entire business with wood from our own forest, were built on the ground floor.