Weingut Hans & Anita Nittnaus

The Free Bacchus Story

Four questions on the family's own page do more than most estates manage in a paragraph. More work? More risk? Less earnings? Accepted. Biodynamic farming is usually sold on what it gives back; it is rarer to see a producer set out the bill first.

The estate is at Gols in Burgenland and works two distinct terroirs rather than one. East of the Neusiedlersee the soils are sandy clay with flint through them; up in the Leitha hills they turn to limestone and slate. The same family farms both, which means the wines can be compared against each other with the grower held constant.

Burgenland is where Austria makes its serious red wine, and the reds here are worth knowing precisely because they are unfamiliar. They are medium-bodied and savoury with firm acidity and moderate alcohol, built around dark fruit rather than jam, and they behave at the table more like a cool-climate red from the Loire than anything grown somewhere hot. The limestone sites in particular give wines with a stony, tightly wound quality that rewards a few years in the bottle.

It is run by Hans and Anita with their sons Andreas and Martin and their niece Lydia, which is two generations working the same two hillsides.

They are on respekt-BIODYN's published register. Membership requires EU organic certification; the certificate number is not confirmed here, and no flagship or price is recorded yet.