Leo Sommer
Leithaberg, Austria
The Leithaberg appellation is a very special place geologically – the last eastern ridge of the Alps, the shore of an ancient sea, with schist and limestone soils that cradle millions of years old shark fossils. Leo Sommer took the lead of his family’s winery in the heart of Leithaberg in 2015 – a family winery dating back to 1698 – and his first consideration was how to make wines that honor both history and place, while still bearing out his own vision of “emotionally appealing wines”.
Looking back to his grandfather’s methods, he found that minimal intervention winemaking has strong precedent in the family. For Leo, that approach held the key. Building on family history, Leo practices gentle organic farming, minimal intervention in the cellar, spontaneous fermentation, extended lees aging, and no fining or filtration. He says, “We perform very few tasks, except those that are extremely important.”
The resulting wines are some of the most elegant and singular coming out of Austria – full of salt, herbs, and stony tension that the unique Leithaberg terroir makes possible.
Solidarität
Middle Burgenland, Austria
Solidarität is German for “solidarity”, and Franz Weninger is a believer. For him it means sticking together, and the most ancient human way of doing that is through food and drink. The Solidarität wines are beautifully-farmed, proper wines, made for Tuesday night at home with your people, a picnic with friends, a house party, a potluck, and any other time you’re sticking together with the people you love.
Franz and Petra have been friends in life and business for a decade now, and we’ve had the most fun cooking up this side project. The accessibility is the point: let’s fill each others’ glasses without thinking too hard about what it costs.
Katrin Lautner
Middle Burgenland, Austria
If you want to know what Katrin’s wines taste like, you should spend an afternoon in a meadow. They’re effortlessly beautiful – delicate and vibrant, pretty and unfussy, rustic and composed.
Despite having worked closely in the cellars of no less than three Burgenland greats (Leo Sommer, Markus Altenburger, and Franz Weninger, where she is the cellar master until today), Katrin’s style is entirely her own, and delightfully so.
Katrin rents 2.5 hectares of vines in and around Neckenmarkt, and farms them gently herself, with a bit of help from friends and family. Her production is tiny, and I cherish every bottle entrusted to me!
Von der Vogelwaide
Wachau, Austria
Daniel and Michael didn’t exactly set out to break every sacred rule in the Wachau Valley, but here we are. What are their transgressions? To name a few: growing Grüner on rocky soils rather than löss, blending varietals (gasp!), trying for less botrytis rather than more, bottling wines unfiltered (try not to faint). This isn’t eyebrow-raising stuff in most corners of Austria, but here, in the most traditional and prestigious winegrowing region in the country, it’s not generally what’s done.
But Daniel comes by it honestly. He is an outsider: a German, boy-wonder winemaker who cut his teeth in some of the most prestigious wineries in France. It wasn’t in the plans to start a winery in Austria, but falling in love can turn you on a dime, and here he landed.
In any case, breaking the rules looks good on them. All joking aside, Daniel and Michael make some of the most specific and finessed examples of Wachau Grüner and Riesling I’ve ever tasted. To sum up, they are two of the classiest punks I know.
Super Cattivo
Middle Burgenland, Austria
You haven’t tasted aperitivi like these. You just haven’t.
Tristan and Daniel met in the West Village a decade ago, working in a Michelin-starred Austrian restaurant, Tristan managing and Daniel working as his somm. Chaos and friendship ensued.
Years later, back in Europe, the two went on vacation in Liguria, where Daniel visited often as a child, and where he now lives with his family. One evening, over aperitivi, the two wondered why the wine world is so full of organic and biodynamic growers while in the booze world we rarely talk about farming at all.
So, like one does, they started making aperitivi from the most perfect biodynamic and organic ingredients they could find. And the result is “WTF” in a glass. (The schnozzberries taste like schnozzberries!)
The base wine is from Franz Weninger (in other words, excellent). The citrus comes from a few small, biodynamic family farms in Italy and Spain at peak winter ripeness. Everything is done by hand and in style (check their website for photographic evidence). IMHO, these are the most honest/juicy/vibrant/party-time aperitivi one could hope to get their hands on.
Cantina Martinelli
Soave, Italy
Cantina Martinelli is a micro-winery in Soave, a tiny island of soulfulness in a sea of industrial winemaking. While the vast majority of the wine coming out of the region is from young vines farmed for maximum yield, Francesco Martinelli is taking very small and concentrated yields from very old vines. His 2 hectare vineyard is tucked away high in the volcanic northern hills, surrounded by thick, wild forest, and facing east into the morning sun. The vineyard is split into three crus, all planted to Garganega, with original plantings starting in 1953 and completed in 1961. It has never been irrigated, and has been free of chemicals for more than 60 years.
Francesco Martinelli’s father Dario bought the tiny estate in the 1990s, intending it as a place for his family and friends to connect to nature in an old fixer-upper farm house. A local farmer cared for the vines until the 2010s, at which point Francesco recognized the potential for making really special expressions of Soave. He began farming the vines with friend and agronomist Antonio Zappoli, and the pair completed organic certification in 2020.
Now Francesco makes a small lineup of low intervention wines – old vine Garganega four ways from his vineyard in Fitta, and one light red from an old parcel he recently acquired in Valpolicella. Francesco would say that winemaking really must be done on a small scale to be meaningful. “If your grandma makes a cake, it’s amazing, all your friends like it. Then grandma makes 3 cakes next week, and it’s still great. But if you take Grandma’s recipe and make 2000 cakes… you will not have your Grandma’s cake anymore.”
Making wine this way in Soave lands Francesco in what he calls a “double blind spot”: natural wine drinkers are not looking to Soave for new things, and loyal Soave drinkers are not looking for natural wine. But Francesco is happy to let the wines speak for themselves, and boy do they.