Judith Beck Skin-Contact Mish Mash 2023

More about Judith Beck

Located in the village of Gols Judith Beck and her family tend to 15 hectares of vines surrounding their beautiful winery and home. Although the Beck family has been farming crops sustainably in Burgenland for decades it was in 1976 that they decided to increase their plantings of vines and focus exclusively on making wine. When Judith took over from her father Matthias in 2001 they began practicing Biodynamics, which has become a major part of their lives. Official biodynamic conversion commenced in 2007.

Judith trained at Château Cos d'Estournel in Bordeaux, Braida in Piedmont and Errazuriz in Chile and has seen many different approaches to winemaking and farming. Since moving home to Gols she has focused entirely on sustainable agriculture and this is what led her to make natural wines. She found that biodynamics gave her healthier soils, vines and grapes and eventually the wines stopped needing additions. Her experiences all over the globe has led her to believe that because of life and health in her vineyards she is able to realize terroir-driven, emotional and lively wines often with no intervention whatsoever.

Judith makes dozens of beautiful wines and choosing between them was very difficult. She works primarily with indigenous Austrian and Hungarian varieties (Burgenland was a part of Hungary until 1921) and is a member of the Pannobile association which champions indigenous grape varieties in the region. She is also a member of “11 Frauen und ihre Weine” (11 Women and their Wines) and “Respect” which is an association of Biodynamic growers in Austria. Winemaking is hands off, with no synthetic chemicals added during the process, some wines are bottled with a small addition of So2 but otherwise there is nothing. All her fruit is handpicked.

In Judith Beck’s own words: “International style can be produced by everyone, everywhere. My wines are my own. They are here and now. And that is for me the most beautiful thing”.