The Reisetbauers have owned the farm in the idyllic Upper Austrian town of Axberg, very close to Linz, since 1956. Hansi Junior continues the family era and is thus, after his grandfather and father, already the third farmer at the “Kirchdorfergut”. In the meantime, a modern company building has been added to the farm, but agriculture surrounds the entire “Kirchdorfergut” today as it did then.

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Most of the fruit thrives here on more than 13,000 williams and about 7,000 apple trees, where the noble fruit is picked exclusively by hand.  For apples, the assortment ranges from Arlet, Elstar, Gala, Boscop, Idared to Topaz, Rubinette and Pinova. Among the pears, there is the famous Williams pear, as well as Red Williams, Gute Luise and Dr. Guyot to harvest.

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"To ensure that the trees want for nothing even on hot summer days, we have set up a special irrigation system. In addition, everything is converted to organic farming. In this day and age, that's actually already a matter of course," says Hansi Junior.

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Fruit growing is one of the mainstays of Reisetbauer's organic agriculture, and arable farming is the other. The fields provide the valuable raw materials for the spirits, for example, the summer malting barley for the single malt whisky or the wheat for the "Axberg Vodka".

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There are invaluable advantages to growing your own raw materials:

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With over 20 different varieties of Eau-de-Vie, it is of course not possible to grow all of them yourself. Hans Reisetbauer is therefore always on the lookout for the perfect quality of fruit and if this is not available as desired in a given year, it can happen that an Eau-de-Vie of this variety is no longer available. Only when the fruit from Hans Reisetbauer's suppliers meets his high standards is it processed into an Eau-de-Vie.

Incidentally, Hans Reisetbauer obtains the apricots for his famous apricot Eau-de-Vie from his good friend and winemaker Bernhard Ott, with whom he has been working since 1999.