2021 Gross Sauvignon Blanc “Bergwein”

Taste & Critical Acclaim: ”Showing aromas of gooseberries, green apples, herbs and bell peppers. Crisp and vibrant, with a medium body and sharp acidity. Crushed stone minerality adds interest on a long, dry finish. Sauvignon blanc and welschriesling. Drink now or hold." –James Suckling, 92 points

"The 85% Sauvignon, 15% Welschriesling 2021 Bergwein comes from steep sites and was aged for about a year in traditional large wood and stainless steel tanks and then matured for several more months in steel tanks until the unfiltered bottling in April of this year. The wine shows a very clear, classically fresh Styrian bouquet of bright fruit while being dense and yeasty as well as spicy on the nose, with grassy-green notes. The palate is slender and elegant yet also juicy, dense and expressive, with fine, citrusy bitter notes on the finish. It's an excellent wine for everyday. 13% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted in Ratsch in May 2023." –Wine Advocate, 90 points

Pairing: Crisp salads, savory pastries, grilled or roasted chicken or turkey, risotto or pasta, seafood like crab, shrimp, white fish, and veggie-based meals all pair well with this stunning white wine. Additionally, green herbs like parsley, basil, mint, tarragon, thyme, fennel, chives, rosemary, and spices like white pepper, coriander, and saffron also make for excellent pairings. Some specific examples include serving this with fish cakes with herbs and chiles, smoked whitefish salad with creme fraiche and capers (check it out below), shrimp and scallop dumplings, pan-seared fish with citrus pesto, pan-seared asparagus with cashews, polenta with asparagus, peas and mint, and chive pesto potato salad would make for lovely pairing partners.

Smoked Whitefish Salad With Crème Fraîche and Capers
Recipe from Peck’s, adapted by Julia Moskin 

Johannes and his brother Michael (who leads the family’s winemaking at Vino Gross, just over the border in Slovenia) also collaborate under the name Brüder Gross (soon to be renamed Gross & Gross).

History
The family estate dates to the mid-18th century, with an ancestor’s purchase of a mixed farm in Ratsch. In 1907, Heinrich Gross bought a vineyard in the Witscheiner Herrenberg (now Slovenia), though it would be decades before the family specialized in wine alone. In the early 1980s, Alois Gross, Johannes’ and Michael’s father — inspired by “many discussions with winemakers around the world,” as Johannes explains — trained his attention on improving wine quality and is now widely regarded as a pioneer of quality winemaking in the region. Alois handed over the estate to Johannes when he was just 21; Alois knew from his own experience how important it is it be trusted to make decisions from an early age. Now Michael oversees the family’s Slovenian estate, Vino Gross in Gorca, while Johannes heads up Weingut Gross at home in Ratsch. They are two different operations, each with their own ideals and philosophies, united by shared family heritage and remarkably similar terroir and varieties.

Johannes Gross
“When I was six, I wanted to become an astronaut,” says Johannes. ”But I left the idea when I heard how long it takes you away from home. Today, it would be unthinkable for me.”

Johannes wasn’t much older when, “listening to my father speaking about his wines,” he realized winemaking would be his future, too. “I didn’t study at university, but have done lots of work in the vineyards and cellars, traveled all over the world, and spoken with interesting people in the business.”

Johannes and his wife, Martina, with support from Alois, now lead the estate. For them, “happiness is ... living amidst vineyards, wild orchards and groves, surrounded by family, doing affectionate and dedicated work.”

Ratsch / Südsteiermark
Südsteiermark is a poetically verdant, hilly region that stretches from the regional capital of Graz, east to the edge of Burgenland, and south to Austria’s Slovenian border. Nestled between the Alps and the Adriatic, steep amphitheaters of vines alternate with meadows, forests, and small fields for a storybook landscape and unique wine culture. “Viticulture has been practiced here since the Romans and is still the number one economic factor in this region,” Johannes explains.

Under the Habsburgs, Styria extended into what is now Slovenia, creating a vast viticultural area, split when political borders were redrawn in the aftermath of the two world wars.

Johannes explains the geologic history behind the distinctive terrain: “When the primal ocean retreated around nine million years ago, clay and lime were piled up in criss-cross layers. Rivers and winds carried in gravel and sand, modelling hill after hill.”

Soils are now a highly diverse mix of primal ocean and alluvial deposits: sand, gravel, marl (known locally as opok), and shell limestone, even some volcanic soils.

Ratsch is in the heart of Südsteiermark, one of three Styrian subregions, this widely regarded as best suited to the sauvignon blanc that is typically planted on the best parcels. Aromatic whites — including gelber muskateller, furmint, and welschriesling — are among the subregion’s calling cards.

“There are two major challenges to viticulture here: the climatic and the topographical,” notes Johannes. “Unpredictable weather, extremely steep hills, and a wide variety of soil formations in our vineyards are both a challenge and a gift. We need 600 working hours per hectare, which is a multiple of other wine regions. The high location of the vineyards near the Alps makes us a true cool climate area. Aromatic, fresh wines with natural acidity and energy grow naturally with us. The grapes become fully ripe in this Alpine- Mediterranean climate, and due to diurnal temperature variations of up to 20°C, they possess both freshness and aroma.”

Farming and Vineyards
In a delicate climate, responsiveness is key.
“We work each year a little bit differently according to crop, leaf, and soil management. We want balance in our wines, so we need balance in our vineyards. This also means less crop per vine – about 1-1.5 kg per vine. We are looking for a perfect grape according ripeness, without botrytis. We believe that there is a perfect ripeness window. This window we try to catch.”

The wines are above all fresh, driven by natural acidity and energy that, in Johannes’s words, “grow naturally with us” thanks in large part to the heat-trapping function of the bowl-like vineyards and the nightly inflows of starkly cooler mountain air.
Johannes points out: “We find big differences between the soils in our village of Ehrenhausen, which are strongly calcareous, with marl and limestone, and our vineyards in the neighboring village of Gamlitz, where you can find gravel and sand, and very aromatic, early accessible wines grow” — foremost gelber muskateller.

The Gross family was able to purchase the Nussberg, a named vineyard since the 15th century, in 1986. (The prior owner left behind a bottle of “Nussberger” from the 1868 vintage.) It’s a bowl-shaped basin ranging between 370 and 460 meters (1,200 and 1,500 feet) above sea level, with slopes as steep as a startling 85%. Even within this single Ried, there is limestone, marl, and a flank of volcanic origin. Its exposures are south and west, and it opens to the Koralpe mountains in the west, allowing in cooler air.

Sulz is a south-facing site, sheltered from the Alpine climate in the west and open to the east. As a result, it’s one of Südsteiermark’s warmest sites. Its range of elevations is similar to Nussberg’s and only somewhat less steep. Soils are heavy chalk-bearing clay and conglomerate.

In the cellar
“In the cellar, we take many steps back to the techniques my father had at the beginning of his time as a winemaker,” Johannes says, echoing the sentiment of his generation.” In short: “Do not try to make a wine that was not already in the grape.”
All the sauvignon blanc wines are destemmed and given a short maceration following by gentle pressing, slow, spontaneous fermentation in traditional wooden barrels, 12 months’ maturation in large traditional wooden barrels and another six months in stainless steel tanks. (Johannes strongly recommends decanting the single-vineyard bottlings.)