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.

For a reader new to Austrian wine, that is a good place to start, because it is genuinely local. The wines are dry, light on their feet and built for drinking rather than cellaring. Austria's whites in general run drier and more savoury than German ones at the same price, with less of the citrus-and-stone austerity and a bit more herb and pepper to them.

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.