Mid-August 2013, blue sky over the Aischgrund in Franconia. Kai Wagner and Josef Engelhart meet at the "Golden Cross", the inn in the small village of Ickelheim with its two striking gatehouses. The meeting place is well chosen, and not only because of the home-made platter that the two of them are eating, because it is accompanied by the "Hausschoppen", a hearty white wine from a stone jug. It is homemade and comes from the oldest pile vineyard in Germany, the Ickelheimer Schlossberg. Sadly, its days are numbered, because the Heinlein family can no longer do the painstaking manual work for health reasons, and a successor has not been found. The vineyard has not been tended for months, and so the last stone jugs are now being served and emptied. Then it will be over.