Gartengold – Juice with a Mission
Every year, 20’000 – 40'000 tons of Swiss apples end up in the garbage or on the compost heap. Many of these apples come from old standard trees whose owners have either no time or no energy to harvest the fruit themselves, and where commercial harvesting is rendered uninteresting because of the low price of cider apples. Many standard trees have, therefore, faced the chop in recent decades. These large trees, however, are not just good on the eye and a delight for the palate, they also provide a highly important habitat for bees, birds and all number of insects.
GARTENGOLD is here to save these apple trees. For the past ten years, the team at GARTENGOLD has been taking the unused fruit from these standard apple trees and using it to produce a unique 100% natural apple juice according to an age-old Swiss tradition. The story of its inception, however, is anything but traditional: In 2013, two students, Leo and Albert, noticed while out jogging one late autumn that the apples of many trees fell unharvested to the ground. Was there a solution to preventing this waste? Could that solution also involve creating jobs for people with support requirements?
Every autumn since then, GARTENGOLD has been roaming the rolling green hills of Eastern Switzerland and harvesting old, unused standard apple trees. The apples are plucked by people with support requirements, which means GARTENGOLD not only creates jobs for people who would otherwise have difficulty finding employment, but also prevents food waste and protects biodiversity by harvesting and nurturing old standard apple trees.
"This is how we appreciate human beings and give new life in the GARTENGOLD bottle to the good old heritage apple varieties," says Albert Gebhardt. "For us, appreciating resources is an absolute prerequisite for enjoyment."
Albert Gebhardt, founder of GARTENGOLD
All GARTENGOLD juices are freshly pressed and contain zero additives. The sheer variety of apples means that each bottle is unique, a cuvée of heritage and often rare apple varieties from Eastern Switzerland. Every bottle of GARTENGOLD is filled to the brim with nature and humanity.
A huge thanks to Ann Kristin Haaöen Seige and Gartengold!
