Producer notes from Portovino:

"Rebenhof’s 9.5 hectares lie along Austria’s southern border with Slovenia, in a growing area called Süd Steiermark; it’s Austria’s southern most wine growing region, where a gleam of mediterranean sun mixes with a continental climate. Owner Hartmut Aubell inherited his family winery, but his vision as a biodynamic farmer and cellar master is all his own. He works primarily with old vines on two alkaline soil vineyards. The Witscheiner Herrenberg vineyard is composed of layers of sand, gravel, and silt; whereas, the Ratscher Nussberg is grey marl that’s locally called Opok (same as the Ponca found in Collio / Brda). Everyone calls Hartmut by his nickname Harti, and they know him as a bit cagey, yet deeply sensitive. Strangely, for a producer of his ilk, Harti doesn’t talk much about soils, grape varieties, or vintages, even though it’s obvious these soils makes fine wines, and you could easily identify the varieties in his non-blended wines.

Harti told us as we were walking to the cellar: We don’t add or take away anything from the wines. We experiment. And that’s the rub with Rebenhof wines in general, and something he learned while sojourning for a year with the late Didier Dagueneau in the Loire. Rebenhof’s cellar is a canvas for almost an obsessive experimentation to produce intensely emotional wines, which themselves are a dasein mirror of place and feeling where these wines come from, but also of a place and feeling beyond the fine wine and the international natural wine taste."