If ever you take a guided tour of the apple orchards with Maria Tappeiner, you’ll be in no doubt: this is no mere job for her. It’s her vocation.
The Moarhof in Castelbello/Kastelbell today is far more than a classic apple orchard. With their farm produce and guided tours, Maria and her husband Lorenz have built up a stable second livelihood. They never planned it that way but, as sometimes happens in life, coincidence brought about a happy turn of events.
In 2019, when the family were renovating their house, Maria set up a berry patch for her three children behind the apple orchards, where she planted blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries. “Making sure that the kids know where their food comes from has always been important to us,” says Maria. The mother of three has always fancied a new challenge, which us why she began to process the fruit. In the same year, she trained as an “apple ambassador” and converted the room originally intended for the labourers into a small tasting room with a produce corner. Today, this corner is home to Maria’s fruit jams, apple chutney and apple & ginger compote, a variety of syrups and farm-made wine from the Weinacker farm above Castelbello/Kastelbell Castle.
It’s not always easy to have so many pots on the stove, but when Maria Tappeiner’s guests leave her tasting sessions with a new appreciation for apples, she knows why she would never want to do anything else.