Pfaffl

In 1978 Roman Pfaffl married Adelheid (Heidi) and took over his parents' mixed farm in Stetten, in the Weinviertel north of Vienna. It had 0.75 hectares of vines, 23 hectares of cereals, potatoes and sugar beet, bulls, pigs and a small Buschenschank. A year later the couple opened a Heuriger in Korneuburg. Their first Qualitätswein, 200 bottles, came in 1983, and in 2000 they closed the Heuriger to put everything into the winery.

The vineyards grew from 12 hectares in 1989 to 40 in 2000, ten of them from Schloss Bockfließ. In 2003 Roman Sr. chaired the Weinviertel regional wine committee under which the Weinviertel DAC was introduced. In 2011, on his 60th birthday, he and his wife handed the estate to their children. Roman Josef, who joined the cellar in 2004, is winemaker and cellar master. His sister Heidemarie Fischer runs the business and marketing.

Today the estate farms about 160 hectares across a dozen Weinviertel villages, from Stetten and Leobendorf to Bockfließ and Großengersdorf, and in Vienna. The Rossern is a south-facing slope on sandy soil. The Zeis holds fossil oysters about 17 million years old. The estate is certified Nachhaltig Austria and follows integrated viticulture, with green cover and flowering plants between the rows and spraying only every second row. The winery runs on renewable electricity and its own solar panels, and recovers heat from fermentation.

In the cellar, which the family calls its "Wein Spa", the rules are cleanliness, controlled temperature and humidity, and as little pumping as possible. The range climbs from the vom Haus wines through single-site Grüner Veltliner (Zeisen, Haiden, Hund) to Reserve bottlings, with WIEN.1 and WIEN.2 from the Vienna vineyards, sparkling wines and an alcohol-free Grüner Veltliner.