A tractor in the mountains

In 1946, cows seem to have found their place among the neatly aligned rows of this Belgian orchard. This photograph, taken from Edmond Van Cauwenberghe’s work Cherries: Standardization and Cultivation, illustrates—long before the term became widespread—the principles of agroforestry: fruit trees for production, and animals to maintain and fertilize the soil. A natural coexistence that, nearly eighty years later, continues to inspire resilient agricultural systems.

In an era when the science of winemaking was advancing, this advertisement for precision scales and weights, taken from the book "Wines, ordinary wines, sparkling wines, sweet wines, and liqueur wines " (U. Guyon & J. Laborde, 1912), demonstrates the importance of precision in winemaking. A reminder that behind every great wine lies exact measurement... and a touch of mystery.