Weinbau Michael Wenzel

Weinbau Michael Wenzel sits in Rust, on the western shore of Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland, where the family has grown wine since 1647. Rust made its name on Ruster Ausbruch, the botrytis sweet wine historically built on Furmint - a grape that had all but disappeared from Austria by the late twentieth century. Wenzel is central to bringing it back: Michael's father Robert brought cuttings over from Hungary in the mid-1980s, and Michael, a twelfth-generation grower, now farms around nine hectares along the Ruster hill-chain, with Furmint about a third of the plantings, said to be roughly a tenth of all the Furmint in Austria. Certified organic since 2008, the cellar work is low-intervention: native-yeast spontaneous fermentation, hand-harvesting, and minimal sulphur.