Austria Natural Wine Movement — Where to Drink

“Austria’s Tuscany” was my destination: the wine region of Sudsteiermark, or Southern Styria, in the foothills along the Slovenian border. But in this small country known for alpine sports, high culture, and Weiner schnitzel, all roads lead to Vienna. So the day before I set out on a spring driving tour of wine country, I found myself in the imperial city, opening the windows at Hotel Sacher to take in the delicious weather. My elegant suite was a composition of eau de Nil wall fabric, ecru silk curtains, and molded paneling in eggshell hues, and it gave me an idea to try out over dinner. 

At a relaxed farm-to-table bistro nearby (Restaurant Schubert, sadly now closed), the twenty-something proprietor seated me on the terrace and suggested I let him handle the ordering. I agreed, and asked him to also choose two Austrian wines. My idea, I explained, was to compare one “classic” from a landmark Austrian winery, something in the faultless Hotel Sacher manner, with an equivalent “natural” wine. The proprietor’s eyes lit up. He knew what to do. (There is no exact definition, but typically wines sold as natural, or low-intervention, come from organic or biodynamic grapes fermented with wild yeast and treated with minimal sulfur.) 

Out came a progression of beautiful seasonal dishes. White asparagus with grilled romaine and diced rhubarb in a pool of pea emulsion. A frilly salad of sheer carrot ribbons. Delicately poached salmon trout. Jerusalem-artichoke sorbet with preserved quince for dessert. It was a culinary sketch of springtime in Austria: the taste of nature, and a perfect counterpoint to the refinement of the Hotel Sacher.

As for the wines, there was a misunderstanding. The proprietor brought me two glasses — for each course. Eight fine wines in total, every one of them elegant and precise. And from each pairing, without a doubt, I preferred the natural wine. Why? They had charm, individuality, dash. They were fun, but not in the disheveled way of many natural wines I’d tried in the past. 

I texted the results of my experiment to Marko Kovac, cofounder of Karakterre, the natural-wine fair in Eisenstadt that was to be the final stop on my itinerary. 

“What have you people done to my palate?” I teased. “There’s no going back,” he replied.

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Austria’s Approach to Natural Wine

To each his own, of course, and some drinkers will always prefer the classical style. But what I discovered on the natural-wine route through Southern Styria and adjacent Burgenland — regions known, respectively, for fresh-as-springwater whites and reds nimbler than a Strauss waltz — is that Austria is not a funky place, wine-wise. The low-intervention bottles I sampled were faultless and refined, with none of the barnyard aromas, kombucha fizz, and sour-grape tang tolerated by vintners in other, less exacting corners of the world. By the end of the trip, it occurred to me that Austria may well be the world’s most approachable gateway to natural wine.

From time to time, I put down my glass to soak in the history of these culturally rich borderlands, which were once not at the edge but in the middle of a European superpower. “Austria used to go all the way south to Trieste,” one sommelier reminded me. Austro-Hungary’s Hapsburg dynasty had counted Styria among its possessions since 1278; on the eve of World War I, it ruled as a constitutional monarchy over such far-flung cities as Trieste, Budapest, Prague, Kraków, and Sarajevo. 

Resources, ideas, and influences from across the realm entered the country’s cultural DNA. I kept catching glimpses of elsewhere in the food, the palaces, the polychrome churches, the stone village houses, the timber farms — each a trace of that cosmopolitan empire.

Even more vivid than the region’s history was the sparkling presence of nature. Southern Austria was in full flower during my trip: lilac and elder in the forested Styrian hills, honey locust and wild rose on the plains of Burgenland, a perfumed landscape that rushed in through my open car window. Everywhere I was met with the bloom of health. At little taverns, garden pickings filled the menus, and at night the family-run inns smelled of air-dried linen. Folks carried themselves with a sense of contentment and good humor, as if they weren’t too busy to open a bottle of wine at lunch or saunter off for an afternoon hike.

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A Visit to Graz, the Capital of Styria

Halfway to Graz, the storybook capital of Styria, green hills gently gathered themselves up from the smooth plains like the skirt of a couture ball gown. Graz was once an imperial city, like Vienna, but it has a distinctly southern exposure. I had the strange sensation, as I walked into the UNESCO-designated historic center through plazas planted with olive trees, that I could feel a Mediterranean breeze. It was as the Hapsburgs wished. In the 16th century they brought in Italian architects to update their drab medieval city. Domenico dell’Allio delivered them a colonnaded palace that is now home to the provincial parliament. On the nearby central square a hulking town hall, the Hauptplatz, bristles with architectural doodads like an old Baroque pile but is practically new, put up in 1893 by city-proud residents who paid for it with a tax on wine.

I ducked in to Gasthaus Stainzerbauer, a traditional tavern, for lunch. The daily special was white asparagus, warm potatoes, and mâche, a small salad green, drizzled with pumpkin-seed oil, a local delicacy so intensely green it left grassy stains on my napkin. This was classic Styrian cooking, and it would be the baseline against which I measured that night’s dinner at Broadmoar, a countryside restaurant and inn run by innovative chef Johann Schmuck. 

Although it sits barely beyond the Graz suburbs, Broadmoar seemed to exist on the far side of enchantment, in a setting of horse pastures, shadowy woods, and blooming hedgerows. I went for a walk during golden hour and time seemed suspended: dandelions in their uncountable number had flowered, but the puffballs had not yet puffed away. At dinner, Schmuck’s menu explored the precise micro season of the farm across 11 courses, each accompanied by low-intervention wines from small regional producers. Nearly every plate was sprinkled with the wild edibles I’d seen underfoot on my walk: oxalis, chickweed, yarrow, field garlic, rumex, bishop’s weed, cress, and nettles that stung less than ours in the United States. Compared with lunch, this was Styria at its most natural.

A cock crowed. Across the valley another answered. It was 4:21 a.m., and the skylight above my bed was open. Soon the light rose and, with it, the most flamboyant birdsong I’d heard since a morning on the Serengeti many years ago. Among the chorus, a cuckoo called. I had never heard one before, but it couldn’t have been anything else: it sounded exactly like a cuckoo clock. 

Somehow my head felt fine despite the previous night’s many glasses of research. Natural-wine proponents claim their low-sulfur tipple causes less of a hangover, or maybe it was just a good night’s sleep in the super-oxygenated air. But in any case, I was fully charged to drive about 45 minutes south, nearly to the border with Slovenia, to meet a world-renowned guru of natural-wine making, Sepp Muster, and his wife/collaborator, Maria.

There was no mistaking the Muster vineyards. Conventional management practices suppress everything that isn’t vine by mowing, tilling, and spraying herbicide with an intensity that ranges from anal-retentive to paranoid. The Musters do the opposite. They invite in unruly nature and encourage its residency among their vines. I could distinguish a dozen kinds of rival wildflowers and broad-leaf plants in the thick grass. Pollinators buzzed past. Swarms of smaller insects, backlit by the morning sun, were snatched from the air by avian patrols. 

Sepp greeted me on the steps of the couple’s gently worn 18th-century farmhouse and toured me through the vineyards, established on land his father acquired in 1978. “We trust every plant is growing on the right spot,” Muster said of the green exuberance, “because that’s the way nature works. If the soil is alive, everything works.” Robust and jolly in his middle years, Sepp sounded by turns like a humble farmer, a wise ecologist, a climate scientist, a government agronomist, and a Druidic high priest. Another secret: he doesn’t make the wine. “I’m observing,” he said in succinct summary of the entire low-intervention ethos. In this worldview, the wine is made “in the vineyard”: the vines themselves create a self-portrait of the year to capture in a wine bottle. We joined Maria at a table in the half-wild garden, and Sepp uncorked several bottles. “We can feel this complexity in the wine,” he said, swirling a glass. “It’s not a physical sensation; it’s just very fine, elegant flavors.” 

The surprise was that Styria has historically not been known for its fine wine, though grapevines were first recorded in the area in the 17th century, Sepp said, but at the turn of the 20th century more grapes were being grown commercially on the Slovenian side of the border. The reason had to do with politics, to an extent, but mostly with climate. Styria was too chilly. A warming trend reached a historic milestone with the perfect 1992 growing season. Sepp compared the current climate conditions with those of Burgundy in the 70s and 80s — wine-making Valhalla. 

That night I stayed nearby at Weingut Tauss, a winery and inn outside the village of Schlossberg run by Alice and Roland Tauss. Breakfast the next morning was served outdoors on tablecloths the same milky blue as the bright, humid sky. Alice Tauss put out whole-wheat bread, superb house-made jam, and a scramble of orange-yolked eggs drizzled with the ubiquitous pumpkin-seed oil. She moved among the tables in a nutmeg linen skirt, a picture of health and good conscience. Roland had the acute, assessing look of a hyper-educated bird and sported a New Wave haircut. In the tasting room, they described their intent, as winemakers, to bottle a sense of harmony and “lifeness,” their term for the spirit of biodiversity that animates the meadow-like vineyards.

“In German, vineyard is Weingarten, a wine garden,” Alice told me. “We do a lot of work for our place to be a garden. For us, it is also a harvest to see the wildflowers and hear the birds.” 

Under the influence of their graceful wines, I felt myself falling in love with the day, the place, the couple’s animist spirituality, the whole bucolic vision. Longtime customers had the opposite reaction when the winery first went natural a decade ago. They fled, “one hundred percent,” Roland said. “In this region, people don’t drink our wine,” he continued, an edge in his voice. The Tausses also faced scorn from conventionally minded neighbors who considered their nonconformist methods eccentric and possibly lunatic.

I drove away with a greater appreciation for the nerve shown by Styria’s natural winemakers in breaking away from the establishment, with its rule books and official tasting panels that decide if a bottling can carry the label of “Qualitätswein.” Several years back, a wine submitted by the Musters failed to meet all 10 quality standards — a fact Maria shared with a twinkle of pride. 

The Final Leg of the Road Trip

If you can name any red from Austria, it’s probably Blaufränkisch, the wine for which Burgenland — Austria’s easternmost and least populous state — is best known. (Bonus points for naming Zweigelt, the region’s other widely planted red.) Traditionally, local growers went 50-50 on white versus red, explained Martin Lichtenberger, who makes wine in Breitenbrunn with his Spanish wife, Adriana González. The balance shifted in the 1980s, thanks to European Union subsidies, but the couple seeks out old plots that escaped uprooting. “Each has its own history, which you respect,” Lichtenberger said. “You don’t have to raise the vines anymore. But you take them by the hand and lead them your way.”

“We are a bit romantic,” said González of their passion for gnarled vines set in imperfect rows. But when it comes to cellar work, they favor “serious” wines, meaning the opposite of funky. (At Karakterre, Judith Beck, the talented maker of whistle-clean wines, similarly said, unsmilingly, “I am a serious person, and I take what I do very seriously.”)

What Burgenland has over Styria is scale — it’s possible to go big on this flat acreage. The one Austrian natural-wine producer whose bottles I can find dependably in wine stores around the U.S. is Meinklang, which is headquartered at the southeastern end of Lake Neusiedl in Pamhagen, a bottle toss from Hungary. 

The farmers behind the brand, the Michlits family, have lived in the region for seven generations and now keep 200 of their roughly 6,000 acres in wine grapes. The diverse operation includes grain for beer and cattle for beef, and it all runs on principles established by the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Born in Austro-Hungary in 1861, Steiner created biodynamics, a way of farming that combines organic methods (cattle manure for fertilizer) with esoteric rituals intended to draw down cosmic energies, or something like that. Biodynamics is a mash-up of premodern farming traditions, neo-pagan animism, liturgical precision, and recordkeeping worthy of the papal bureaucracy. Call it spiritual agronomy for short — or call it whack-a-doodle nonsense — but either way, biodynamics is a force in the wine world. 

Most of the places I visited along Austria’s natural-wine route were certified biodynamic; Meinklang’s spectacular winery-slash-tasting room does them all one better. The building is designed according to anthroposophist principles — more Steiner woo-woo — and uses eco-friendly building materials such as an all-wood roof structure and rammed-earth floors and walls. Farmer Werner Michlits and collaborating winemaker Niklas Peltzer led me through a leisurely tasting and explained their goal: to produce approachable “bridge wines” that are meant to be affordable, honest, and easy to enjoy.

Like the Meinklang visitors’ center, Burgenland as a whole is well kitted out for visitors. I enjoyed a hipster hangout, Neusiedler, where the tattooed generation gathers for grass-fed burgers and natty Blaufränkisch, as well as Michelin-starred stops for the sorts of high-end tourists who return to Vienna with their trunks full of wine. 

The region’s star establishment is Taubenkobel, a Relais & Châteaux resort that opened 41 years ago as a simple B&B. These days, the founders’ daughter, co-owner Barbara Eselböck, and her husband, chef Alain Weissgerber, send out 12 courses for lunch. (The best was a one-bite lovage tart; second best was a scoop of rhubarb ice cream cupped by radicchio leaves like pink-speckled clamshells.)

The gaggle of wines accompanying the meal included several from Gut Oggau, a winery launched in 2007 by the Taubenkobel founders’ other daughter, Stephanie, and her husband, Eduard Tscheppe, who was formerly a conventional winemaker in Styria. Lunch proved beyond a doubt how Austrian natural wines can pair with even the most refined cuisine. Not to say they were entirely conventional — some were still a little unbuttoned by the strictest standards of propriety. An archconservative on an Austrian wine board’s tasting panel might well have found fault.

But a T-shirt I saw at Karakterre earlier in the day captured the growing confidence and mischievous spirit of the crowd gathered there, who care less every year what conventional arbiters think — because they are too busy selling wine. It was the equivalent of a one-finger salute aimed at critic Robert Parker, who once ruled supreme as the wine industry’s global arbiter thanks to his 100-point rating system and preference for opulent, conventionally “perfect” wines. It read: parker gave me 50. 

Where to Stay and Sip Natural Wine in Austria

Vienna

Hotel Sacher Wien: The grande dame of Vienna hotels, subtly refreshed in 2018, remains a paragon of classical elegance. Breakfast is served in the superb ballroom.

Meinklang Hofladen: The in-town “farm shop” from Austria’s largest natural winery multitasks as a coffee house, all-day café, bakery, wine bar, and wine shop, supplied by the Michlits family’s Burgenland estate.

Styria

Broadmoar: This restaurant-guesthouse offers hyperlocal gastronomy and simple lodging on a picturesque horse farm outside Graz.

Weingut Tauss: Bare-bones but endearing, this biodynamic winery and inn is surrounded by gardens, wildflowers, and vine-covered hillsides.

Gasthaus Restaurant Thaller: Contemporary fine dining on the church square of Veit am Vogau, with a deep wine list of bottles from local legends Maria and Sepp Muster.

Gasthaus Stainzerbauer: A cozy tavern in the historic center of Graz that highlights traditional Styrian ingredients.

Lilli & Jojo: Calling itself a Wirtshaus, or wine tavern, this stop along the wine route charms with elevated country cooking and a friendly welcome.

Ploder Rosenberg: Run by two generations who are passionate about biodynamic wine-making but are delightfully relaxed among their vines. Tastings and guided visits are available. 

Weingut Tement: This large, family-owned biodynamic winery straddles the Austria-Slovenia border and offers tastings — and vistas — on the terrace. 

Burgenland

Gut Purbach: Fine dining in the village of Purbach with a hearty nose-to-tail menu for adventurous eaters and modern guest rooms in an ancient stone house.

Neusiedler: A casual natural-wine bar featuring bottles from Meingklang, Judith Beck, and Lichtenberger González, plus grass-fed burgers and snacks.

Taubenkobel: The region’s leading resort offers luxury accommodations, plus a seasonal tasting menu in the main dining room ($160) and simpler bistro fare at Greisslerei (entrées $15–$47). In both, wines from Gut Oggau feature prominently.

A version of this story first appeared in the August 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Natural Selection.”