Our truly unique onion expert resides on the wonderful Filder Plain, at the foot of the Swabian Jura. When he's not busy working with wild herbs, leaf salads and edible flowers, Gerhard is also cultivating a special Gibson-friendly pickled onion exclusively for us - Allium ampeloprasum, or the aforementioned Stuttgarter Stubel. While the Stubel were growing, the next part in our quest - finding the mother of all vinegar -led us to the edge of the Black Forest. Near the French border, Theo Berl runs Germany's first ever vinegar brewery, now in its fourth generation. In large, oval-shaped wooden vats and barrels, the fruit vinegar was extracted from the apple must in a natural, traditional way, directly from the carefully preserved "mother of vinegar". As the saying goes: "Wie man den Acker bestellt, so trägt er" (you reap what you sow). We certainly did enough sowing, if you recall, so harvesting our onions meant that much more hard labour. In the pouring rain, we pulled one beautiful onion after another from the ground. After trying the first Gibson with our newest addition to the family, however, we know it was all worth it.