Weingut Ebner-Ebenauer

The Free Bacchus Story

Behind a gateway on the main street of Poysdorf, in Austria’s Weinviertel, Marion and Manfred Ebner-Ebenauer farm an estate that has been in Manfred’s winegrowing family for fourteen generations. The house burned almost to the ground in 1945, and his grandparents, who had studied in France and Italy, rebuilt it with a Tuscan feel that is still there.

Their twenty hectares are scattered in small plots in every direction around the town. The old growers did it that way so that one hailstorm could not ruin them, and it has left the couple with loess, sand, limestone, gravel and heavy clay to work with. They make seven different Grüner Veltliners from it. Grüner Veltliner is Austria’s own white grape, and on loess it comes out rounder and broader, with white pepper at the front. The oldest vines are 70 years old.

Every grape is picked by hand into 25-kilo crates. The cellar is 400 years old, six metres underground on three levels, and the juice still reaches it by gravity. Manfred, the family says, loses his phone three to five times a year, and it does not work down there anyway. respekt-BIODYN, the association that certifies biodynamic farming, lists the couple among its members, and the EU organic register lists the vineyards, under Manfred’s name, for its grapes and its wine.