This is our third allocation from Markus Sonntag, or at least from the group of people who help Markus bottle the pristine Grüner Veltliner that is aging in his cold cellar not terribly far from the Czech border.
You see, we never quite know when wine will be released, or what the composition of the wine will be.
Markus is, among other things, a passionate farmer. When he took over his family’s two hectares of vines in 1998 he immediately transitioned to organic farming. In the years since he has begun to explore permaculture, returning the various parcels back to nature as much as possible. The vines are minimally pruned and the grasses are allowed to grow tall in the vineyards. Markus has planted literally hundreds of fruit trees and large swaths of grains to break up the monoculture surrounding the vineyards. Most of the fruit that is grown is left for the animals that graze around the property.
If the farming is the fascination, it’s the business of bottling wine that is less interesting to him. “Sonntag Geschlossen” translates to “closed on Sundays,” an insider’s joke as to how business is done here. The answer is: rarely.
Most of the time the cellar is closed.
Yet when the door are open, a long staircase takes you into another world. Down here, ancient barrels, embalmed in dense layers of mushrooms, protect the literally decades worth of wine that still slumber within.
It’s a common tale: The wine aged for an extended period to let time works its magic, to become a luxury cuvée. It’s always about the wine.
Curiously, and I could be wrong here, it seems to me that the true essence of this project is exactly the opposite: The wine is simply a tool to preserve the old barrels, a museum-worthy exhibition of barrels from as small as barriques to monsters around 4,000 liters large, many of them well over 100 years old. This is craftsmanship, tales of coopers long-since passed, from the turn of the last century in some cases. Many of these were Markus’ grandfather’s barrels.
This barrel-history is alive, because the wine is alive… and vice versa. This is without a doubt one of the strangest wineries… projects (?), art performances (?), works of historical preservation (?) that we are involved in.
Maybe don’t tell this to Markus, but whatever the true motivation is for Markus, we are decidedly in it for the wine. The story is crazy, yes. It’s curious and alluring, but the wine is the center for us.
To me, these wines speak of an older Austria, a more rustic and subtle Austrian wine: Two of the current releases clock in at 12% abv or less. These are among the most ethereal Grüners I have ever had – they feel like mineral water filtered through earth, with fresh garden herbs and plenty of waxy citrus. They are haunting beauties, literally, from another time.
If they say it’s a farmer’s dream to have a full cellar; Markus is in heaven.
Yet, as alluded to above, Markus is not just a farmer. In fact, he has a day job as a computer scientist in Vienna. He’s also a passionate musician, a trombonist. It is his musical pursuits that introduced him to Enrico Bachechi of the winebar Vinifera in Vienna.
Enrico heard Markus’ tales of his cellar and just had to see it. Markus, for his part, had a huge cellar bursting at the seams, but didn’t exactly know how to approach bottling this archive of vintages.
And so the project began, Markus the tour guide through the cellar – Enrico the editor.
The wines rest, for decades and beyond, sometimes being refreshed with lees from the new vintages, until the space is needed or someone can convince Markus to bottle something.
Whenever this happens, each bottling is its own unique story and a picture of a piece of the cellar, some aged intentionally oxidatively, some aged in steel when there were no barrels available to be filled, some blends of many vintages. For this most current release, they have partnered with a local Vienna artist to choose work that represents something of what is in the bottles.
Four wines are in stock now. The full details are below for each of the individual bottlings. Drinkers can reach out to orders@vomboden.com and we’ll connect you with a local retailer stocking the wines. Those in the business know these slices of history won’t last long, reach out to your friendly vom Boden operative for availability.
Multi Vintage “Schmalisse” Rosé ~$26
This is a blend of 2017, 2019 and 2021 vintages of a Gemischter Satz field blend including Portugieser, Blauburgunder, Zweigelt and more. What does that taste like? Sweet perfumed red fruit – strawberry, cherry fruit – with plenty of spice and herbal notes – a great fine thread of minerality extending the wine and giving it great length. It’s 12.5% but it feels so light and airy. Honestly this whole set of wines feels like Austria meets the Savoie. This is great.
Only about 500L are made from these vines every year, and the blend of vintages mixed two very different expressions. A very young and fruity 2021, while 2019 had more petrol and intense minerality, together they are a beautiful example of the style of the domaine.
Art by Nanna Kaiser.
2016 “Hintaus” Gruner Veltliner ~$26
It’s interesting that this is the “simplest” wine of the group, a Grüner that never saw any barrel, only stainless steel, where it developed for “only” seven years. This is ripe and round, a more typical Grüner with spicy melon fruit, yet still it has a certain energy and finessed delineation.
Art by Eiko Grlschl
Multi-Vintage “Schwimmbad” Gruner Veltliner ~$30
This is a Grüner sourced from various barrels throughout the cellar: Grüners from harvests 2002 to 2010 and intentionally left untopped. All of these wines were in barrel until 2016 when the blend was composed in a stainless steel tank and left there until being bottled in the fall of 2022. At 11.5% this is the lightest of the wines and like the 2012 it has a certain seamless feel, an integration that only comes with age. This is delicately oxidative, with seabreeze and marine notes, salty with lots of dried herbs and complex fruit, bruised apple and plenty of minerals. This is superb, a Grüner with delineation and finesse and still tons of lift.
Art by Hansi Fuchs
2012 Gruner Veltliner ~$32
The near decade in barrel has transformed this wine into something else, something more. Grüner Veltliner, often bulky or unwieldy, has, here, become elegant, perhaps not lean but lithe, glossy and airy, nearly levitating and alive. This is Grüner at its most perfumed, sweet apples and pears, nearly caramelized while also mineral – there is that woolly sweetness that shows in Chenin Blancs with some age.
Even a decade already behind it, there is an obvious freshness that drives through this bottle. This is another cask of the wine we brought in years ago — and this tasting note is still 100% correct, though it has found even more harmony and freshness with time in bottle.
There is just no way to reproduce the effects of such extended barrel aging. And there are few precedents for this kind of wine, for this extended an elevage. The only one that comes to mind immediately, are the revered and mystical “Vinothek” bottlings of Nikolaihof – wines that, we might add, command prices of $150-$200+ a bottle. This bottling should retail somewhere below $35, which is, frankly, ludicrous.