Weingut Wieninger

The Free Bacchus Story

Vienna is the only major capital city with working commercial vineyards inside its own boundary, and Fritz Wieninger farms some of them. The vines run up the Bisamberg and the Nussberg on sandy loess, sandstone and weathered limestone, close enough to the city that the trams are part of the view.

His particular interest is the Wiener Gemischter Satz, which is a field blend: several grape varieties planted together in one vineyard, picked together and fermented together, rather than grown separately and blended afterwards. It is an old way of working that Vienna kept when almost everywhere else abandoned it, and it makes a wine that cannot be reverse-engineered into its parts.

What shapes these wines is the Heuriger — the wine taverns on the edge of the city where the year's bottles get drunk young, at a wooden table, with cold cuts and bread. That is the job the wine is built for: fresh, dry, and light enough that a second glass is the obvious next move. Vienna is one of the very few places where the growing and the drinking happen on the same hillside, and it explains more about the style than any tasting note could.

Wieninger says he joined respekt-BIODYN because he valued the community's willingness to keep learning, and he is on its published register of members.

Membership requires EU organic certification. The certificate number is not confirmed here yet, and no flagship bottling or price is recorded.