Weingut Feiler-Artinger

The Free Bacchus Story

In 1936 Gustav Feiler went to an auction in Rust to see who would buy the baroque house at Hauptstraße 3. He was the only person who came, so he bought it himself, reckoning in his head that hard work would pay for it. He and his wife Karoline farmed a little under two hectares of mixed land. The house is still the estate’s home, and their grandson Kurt runs it today with his wife, Katrin.

Rust is a small town on the western shore of the Neusiedlersee, and it is famous for one wine. In autumn the shallow lake sends mist into the vineyards in the mornings and the sun burns it off, which is the recipe for noble rot, the fungus that shrivels grapes to raisins and concentrates their sugar. The best berries are picked out of each bunch by hand, which is where the name comes from: Ruster Ausbruch. In 1681 the townspeople bought Rust the status of a royal free town from Emperor Leopold I for 60,000 gold gulden and 500 buckets of it, around 10,000 litres. Gustav Feiler picked the first Ruster Ausbruch of the post-war years.

Kurt Feiler trained at the wine school in Klosterneuburg, worked a stint at Château Cheval Blanc in Saint-Émilion, and came home in 1994. He has been the sole owner since 2013. About 60 per cent of the estate’s 27 hectares is red, with Blaufränkisch the main grape. Blaufränkisch sits somewhere near Syrah for pepper and near Pinot Noir for weight, with acidity that keeps it upright. The estate has farmed and made its wine by respekt-BIODYN’s rules since 2008.

respekt-BIODYN is the association of central European growers that certifies biodynamic farming, and it lists Kurt Feiler among its current members. The EU organic register lists the estate under the Austrian control body LACON, for both its grapes and its wine.