Weingut Bründlmayer

Weingut Bründlmayer is one of the established reference producers of Austrian wine. The family has been in Langenlois, in the Kamptal about seventy kilometres north-west of Vienna, for centuries. Willi Bründlmayer took over the estate in 1980 and spent the following four decades turning it into a benchmark for Kamptal - Wine & Spirits named him the best Austrian winemaker of the previous quarter-century in 2009, and the estate won the Vinaria Lebenswerk-Trophy for lifetime achievement in 2026. Andreas Wickhoff MW has been general manager since 2016. The next generation of the family is now involved.

Around ninety hectares, which makes Bründlmayer one of Austria's larger quality estates. The iconic sites are a roll-call of Kamptal's best crus:

• Zöbinger Heiligenstein - the legendary Kamptal Riesling site, 250-million-year-old Permian sandstone with feldspar and siltstone. Heiligenstein is to Austrian Riesling roughly what Le Montrachet is to Chardonnay: not the only great site, but the one everyone measures by.
• Kammerner Lamm - calcareous loam over loess, the source of the flagship Grüner Veltliner.
• Käferberg - marine deposits over primary rock.
• Langenloiser Steinmassl - Gföhler gneiss and mica-schist, another great Riesling site.
• Berg-Vogelsang, Loiserberg - additional mineral-driven sites.

Plantings are roughly one third Grüner Veltliner, a quarter Riesling, fifteen percent Pinot Noir, ten percent Chardonnay, with Pinot Blanc, St. Laurent, and Zweigelt rounding out the rest. No synthetic fertilizers since 1979, biodynamic experiments for decades, organic farming (LACON) since 2015. Willi was an early advocate of the Lyre training system - which opens the canopy to light and reduces mildew pressure - and has seventeen hectares trained that way.

Bründlmayer's Sekt programme is the other half of the estate's identity - traditional-method sparkling with long lees aging, including the renowned Brut Reserve and late-disgorged bottlings. For decades Bründlmayer Sekt has been treated as Austria's benchmark for the category.

The house style is classical, restrained, age-worthy - the kind of Kamptal that reads as Austrian in the best sense, meaning cool-climate precision rather than southern density. Bründlmayer sits in the top tier of Austrian producers alongside F.X. Pichler, Prager, Hirtzberger, Emmerich Knoll, and Schloss Gobelsburg.