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Torsten Ernst

Torsten Ernst

Co-owner of Terra Incognita Vineyard, a family-run, highest-elevation vineyard and winery in the North Georgia mountains, featured on GPB's A Fork in the Road podcast.

Sep 29, 2026

2:08
Incognita,
2:09
what's it mean? It's unknown territory in Latin, and the...
2:15
um kind of the background with that is that at least the part that we're interested in is that in the olden days before the entire world was discovered there were cloudy parts beyond the maps and that was always designated and written on the maps as terra incognita and they would put dragons and say there'd be dragons here and all sorts of neat stuff because nobody knew you know what was out there i mean you have to have a ship to go out there it was all cloudy and then like okay you push through the clouds and like now you see that there's good farmland or whatever out there So that's the way I kind of think it here.
2:45
As you drive up our, you know, for service road, you still are in the clouds, right? And you're pushing through and pushing through as a mile long rive up.
2:54
And then hopefully once you come up here and see the view and, you know, get to experience the new world.
3:15
why you decided to start growing these special grapes here.
3:18
Sure, that's a bit of a long story, but my parents are from Germany, at least my dad was from Germany and my mom's family was from Germany.
3:26
So they both spoke German and we always went to Germany, all our families in Germany.

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