Natural wine is here to stay, and some of the best examples are coming from Austria. Producers such as Tschida and Gut Oggau are making low-intervention wines of impressive precision, finesse, and purity.
Natural wine is here to stay, and some of the best examples are coming from Austria. Producers such as Tschida and Gut Oggau are making low-intervention wines of impressive precision, finesse, and purity.
Franz Strohmeier is one of those winemakers. His vineyards buzz with wild biodiversity. He uses only organic treatments in the vineyard, and eschews copper sulfate for whey as a treatment. Sometimes he doesn't treat the vines at all, preferring instead to let nature take its course! Yields are very low.
Strohmeier also bottles with little or no sulfur added, feeling that it inhibits the wine's fullest expression. He lets his wines rest in barrel for a long time so that they are perfectly stable.
Of course, none of that would matter very much if the wines weren't delicious. Thankfully, Strohmeier's wines are indeed very tasty, and they are quite articulate in expressing the stony, herbaceous Styrian terroir.
