Vino Gross Haloze Blanc 2023

The Gross family has been making wine in Austria for five generations. In 2004, luck dropped a prime vineyard 60 kilometers south, just over the border in Štajerska Slovenija, right in their lap. They couldn't say no! They already knew the climate and soils were sort of similar to Ratsch, where they're based. It felt like a sleeping beauty they had to wake up. In 2011, Vino Gross was born. Michael and his wife Maria took the reins fully, and today they farm organically, hand-harvest, let ferments go wild, let malo happen, let the wine hang out on its lees for as long as it needs.

This particular bottle is their Haloze Blanc, a blend of 40% Furmint, 20% Welschriesling, and 40% Sauvignon Blanc, from vines that range from 10 to 65 years old and sit at 300 meters in the Haloze hills, on slopes so steep (65 degrees!) they rival the craziest sites in Europe. The Alps cool things down. The Adriatic warms things up. The bowl-shaped vineyards trap heat like a hug (check out the photo on the label!).

It spent 10 to 12 months in large neutral oak, then a few more in stainless.

Drinking it feels like licking a river stone after a rainstorm. It's lemony. It's crystalline. It's taut. Salty dill pickles, waxy lime dreams, a ghost of table grape that floats in and out, and that flinty, weird, textural thing that makes you tilt your head and go *huh*. If that's your vibe, this is clearly the bottle for you! Open this with your freaky wine friends, or just to surprise your elders and watch their eyebrows go up.