Towering hills, steeply sloped vineyards
and a marquee-player: Sauvignon Blanc
Südsteiermark is the largest winegrowing region in the Steiermark with 2,563 hectares under vines. It is home to many wine estates of various sizes, all producing top-quality wines to an extremely consistent degree. At first glance, the land looks like a small, densely interwoven, compact & orderly garden – attractive to visitor & resident alike for its beauty, the mood that is one moment filled with the sun shining in diagonally, then a moment later by mists rising between the hills.
Wildly romantic hill countryThe photogenic wine country is one of the most beautiful and inviting wine regions in Europe with its wild, hilly viticultural landscape – a refreshment for the eyes & for the soul.To make good wine, you’ve got to have good shoes!Viticulture is truly a hard day’s work here, because most of the vines are growing on extremely steep slopes, where one must work almost entirely by hand; mechanical help is hardly possible.
Each vine a single thread in the tapestry…But it is precisely this complex and labour-intensive agriculture that guarantees individualistic wines, because every winegrower in the Südsteiermark must work out his own concept for his hillsides and his vineyard parcels. He can never rely on quick and easy approaches, as is the case elsewhere, where vines are frequently planted by the thousands on an open plain.In the Südsteiermark DAC there are five Ortswein districtsKitzeck-Sausal,Eichberg, Leutschach, Gamlitz and Ehrenhausen.
Home to the freshest & most sophisticated Sauvignons in Central Europe…
The Südsteiermark is well-known for fragrant and refreshing wines, as well as more profound bottlings vinified in the Burgundian style. Sauvignon Blanc – the variety that made the Steiermark internationally famous – is cultivated here the most widely with 21% of the area under vines.
Welschriesling follows with 16.5%, then Weissburgunder with 11.4%, Muskateller with just under 10% and Morillon with 8.6% of the cultivated area. Besides these, one can still find small parcels of Riesling & Grauburgunder – and even some Scheurebe.Sauvignon Blanc was developed as the primary variety of the region, thanks to continuously progressive teamwork on the part of the winegrowers. Today, these wines constitute a memorable episode in the saga of the world’s finest Sauvignons.
All the good earth one could want
The soils of the Südsteiermark are as varied as the grape varieties – from sand to slate, from marl to limestone. A warm and humid Mediterranean climate with little influence from the Pannonian plain determines the extended vegetation cycle; warm summer & autumn days are followed by cool nights, which encourage the development of a rich aromatic profile and give the white wines a wealth of nuance as well as an element of nobility.
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