Interview with winemaker Frank Seckler

JB: Can you introduce yourself?

FS: Frank Seckler, born on July 2nd, 1982, lives in Schweppenhausen, married, 3 children.

JB: How did you get into wine growing?

FS: In such a wine village, you grow up with viticulture. Especially when your own family has its own winery. Even as a young child, I romped around and played in my grandparents' winery. I still have many happy childhood memories, for example when I accompanied my grandfather from the wine cellar to the vineyard, preferably on the tractor, of course.

JB: How long have you been doing this?

FS: Things really got going when I was about 12 years old, when I earned my pocket money doing year-round work in the vineyard. When I was later allowed to drink the first drop, the winemaking in the cellar was no longer far from my mind (laughs). After graduating from high school, I decided to do things the right way and completed an apprenticeship as a winemaker and then studied viticulture and oenology in Geisenheim.

JB: Do you have a favorite wine?

FS: No, there won't be either. If I drink a wine that I like very much, I want to fall in love all over again.

JB: What makes you happy?

FS: Many things make me happy! For example my children! In the winery it is above all the work with and in nature. That the wine in the glass is also created through my personal creative process.
When the oldest of our wine customers, who have been buying wine from us for more than 50 years, still bring a lot of praise and recognition for us and our wines with them every time they visit, you can say that that makes me happy.

JB: Tell us a little about the Seckler winery

FS: As was customary in the countryside in the past, my grandparents had a small mixed farm. Back then, viticulture played an important role for my grandfather. So he decided in the early 1950s to bottle his wine and sell it himself from the farm. The two sons, my father Hans and my uncle Karl-Heinz, decided to work in the wine industry due to the small size of the business and at the same time to continue to run their own business together with their parents as a pure winegrowing business. Thanks to the professional competence of the younger generation, we produced wines of extremely good quality, which my grandparents successfully marketed. Today my goal is to successfully continue our family tradition with the passion of my parents and grandparents.

JB: What does a typical day in the life of Frank Seckler look like?

FS: Typical day? (Thinks for a moment, laughs) In my professions: vintner, wine cooper, operations manager, salesman, office manager, craftsman, etc., no two days are the same.

JB: How did the collaboration with JECKYBENG come about and why are you doing it?

FS: My longtime friend Dominik Fuss (now a partner of JECKYBENG) told me about JECKYBENG and the philosophy behind it. I could immediately identify with these common ideas.
"Living with nature", which is so existential for me as a winegrower, finally seems to be getting more recognition. I like questioning products. Questions that I also like to ask myself and my tears. Questions that the broad industrial mass market cannot answer. Together with JECKYBENG, I would like to offer products that simply have more behind them: passion and tradition, ecological, economic and social sustainability, regionality and authenticity and transparency.

Here's to Winery Seckler and here to Wine