Producer Gut Oggau

AUSTRIA, BURGENLAND

Gut Oggau is a project born in the town of Oggau, in Burgenland, Austria, started by Eduard and Stephanie Tscheppe in 2007. Before starting the winery, Eduard produced conventional wine with his father in Styria, and the Stephanie family owned and ran the Michelin-starred restaurant Taubenkobel. They first restored the 17th-century cellar that had been abandoned for 20 years, including a 200-year-old screw press. The abandonment of the vineyards for 20 years has proved fortunate, since in this time all chemical and pesticide treatments have been eliminated naturally. This allowed them to start working on the vines in a biodynamic way, where they are now fully Demeter certified. When they started making wine, they noticed that each wine seemed so alive and with its own personality, that they decided to create labels centered on the personality inside each bottle. So they created a family of wines: each wine is named after a member of the family and the labels are designed by the artist Jung von Matt. The children, Atanasio, Teodora and Winifred, are more straightforward, light, bold and energetic wines. The parents, Joschuari, Emmeram, Timotheus and Josephine, come from vineyards with a little more direct exposure to the sun and therefore more maturity producing wines with more body and power. And finally the grandparents, Mechtild and Bertholdi, come from two single vineyards of older vines that produce the most traditional wines of their formation. Most of the vineyards are mixed in the field, and therefore little is said about the vines, but they work with 6 main vines: Blaufrankish, Zweigelt Grüner Veltliner, Welchriesling, Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc) and Gewurtzraminer.