Weingut Loimer

The Free Bacchus Story

Respekt-Biodyn, the Austrian biodynamic association founded in 2007, is now the most rigorous private certification programme for sustainable farming in Central Europe. Fred Loimer was one of its founding members, and had already converted his own estate before the association existed to certify anything.

That sequence is worth noticing. The founding of Respekt was in part a formalisation of what Loimer and a small group of colleagues had spent the 2000s already doing, rather than a standard they then adopted. His Langenlois estate in the Kamptal is EU certified organic and Respekt-Biodyn certified, farming Grüner Veltliner and Riesling across both the region's loess terraces and its harder primary rock sites — soils that produce structurally different wines from identical varieties.

What started the conversion was a bad year rather than a plan. Loimer has said he had a great many problems in 2005 and knew from that point that something had to change.

The Heiligenstein Riesling, from the ancient volcanic site at the edge of Langenlois, has drawn 95 points from Wine Advocate. The Seeberg and Käferberg Grüner Veltliners from loess slopes show the complementary side of the Kamptal: rounder and broader, with the white pepper note the variety expresses most clearly in these soils.

Two soils make two different wines here out of the same grape, which is the most useful thing a newcomer can take from the Kamptal. Loess is soft wind-blown silt, and Grüner Veltliner grown on it comes out rounder and broader, with the white pepper the variety is known for sitting right at the front. Primary rock — the hard old stone under Heiligenstein — gives something narrower and tighter, more mineral than fruity, and slower to open. Same grower, same year, same grape: the ground is doing the talking.

The architecture and label design are among the most distinctive in Austrian wine, which occasionally distracts from the fact that the contents are entirely serious.