Funnily enough, as I was developing some marketing content to promote the pop-up on Instagram when I came across a photo from 1904 of the exact location with the caption that it was a wine tavern at the time. Remarkable coincidence or kismet?

Pop-Ups Everywhere

To take a step back, since last year I have been co-hosting pop-up wine bars in Paris, France and my adopted hometown of Vienna. You can read about the previous pop-ups here (2025 Paris, 2025 Vienna, 2026 Paris), but the concept is simple. Consumers can taste all the wines at the pop-up for free and if they wish they can buy bottles for drinking onsite or takeaway at the same price the wineries sell direct.

For the participating wineries, they provide a minimum of 12 bottles, three for tasting and nine for selling. Whatever wine doesn't sell is returned to the wineries and 100% of the sales are transferred to them. In Paris we achieved two major sales outcomes, finding two different importers in the UK for three of the participating wineries, including my own.

Last week’s pop-up featured more than 25 different wines from 15 Austrian producers, and guests could choose from sparkling, white, red, rosé and orange, including my own first orange wine. Prices spanned from €9 to €31 a bottle (see the full wine list) and we also offered a low alcohol sparkling tea and non-alcohol beer, sparkling and still wine. Most of the wine was certified organic and from small producers.

The Results

The pop-up was open from 18:00-22:30hr each evening and in the end we had nearly 140 guests who purchased 157 bottles spending almost €2,300, a 51% increase compared to last year. When pulling the sales data I also ran some analysis and found some trends.

Similar to Paris, the top price category was €15–19 with 69 bottles sold, followed by €10-14 with 49. Together they accounted for about 75% of sales.

Another statistic I found curious looked at the bottle sales by time of day by color. Red wine climbs steadily as the night goes on and becomes the second-most-purchased style by the time we close. The red wine was served chilled, so it wasn't a reflection of temperature.

And a final chart looks at the time of day and the price per bottle. I think I understand the causation for this data as it was fairly obvious that most of the 50+ year old guests arrived at 18hr and most of the 25 and under arrived later in the evening, meaning the more expensive wine sold early while the young, price sensitive guests purchased the bottles in the €9–17.50 range.

Despite the success in sales one outcome I didn't consider was meeting my neighbors. My neighborhood is similar to Brooklyn with the Austrian equivalent of 2-3 story brownstones and throughout the three-days I met my direct neighbor, who is a student studying mathematics and living just down the road I met another winemaker in his 70s producing 1,000 bottles of rosé from Burgenland.

It just goes to show that wine is a communal experience, whether you are drinking it, or pouring it for others.

Thankfully July has brought some relief with a few days of strong rainfall and cooler temperatures, but due to the previous dry and sustained .

Grafting the Future of Kapitel Zwei

Since I started bottling in 2023 my Chenin Blanc wine has always been made as a blend with Grüner Veltliner. Customers enjoy it, which is fantastic, but my goal has always been to make a 100% Chenin and by 2027 it will now be possible. Thanks to my friends at Weingut Feldtheorie we have grafted more than 500 old Grüner Veltliner vines to Chenin Blanc. While this effort will not produce any grapes this year, next year we expect a full harvest, meaning in 2028 I will bottle my first 100% Chenin wine.

Grafting is not for the faint of heart. First, we had to use a steel brush to remove the old bark (see video) from the vine and due to the extreme temperatures we started at sunrise.

Next step the actual grafting, which is both art and science. We hired professionals because you want it done fast and right the first time, or it will set you back a year. In brief, the Chenin buds were removed from canes collected during pruning back in January 2026 where they were stored in a refrigerator. On 23rd June the buds were removed from the canes and inserted into a t-cut in the trunk of the existing grapevine, which is then taped up exposing only the bud. A professional can do this in precisely 16 seconds (see video), I would be there easily 5 minutes.

The following day we removed all of the leaves from each vine except for two healthy ones. These two leaves will encourage the vine to push water up its xylem to the leaves and the new bud, helping it produce its own cane and leaves. The final step is water, water, water — about 10 liters for each vine.

Kapitel Zwei Coming to UK Market via PerfectCellar.com

At the pop-up in Paris this past February I had the pleasure to meet the team from from PerfectCellar.com, a London-based online wine shop serving the UK market. These guys know wine and were looking to expland their Austrian selection and I am thrilled to share the news that they will be taking bottles of all three of my 2025 vintage and even more wines from Weingut Feldtheorie.

The 2025 vintage was bottled this past Saturday and they will be shipped to London in the coming weeks. Kapitel Zwei wines are will now be available in both Paris and London the perfect companion to oysters and fish & chips in both cities. To my UK customers, expect an email from me in September so you can place your orders locally, which will eliminate any additional VAT and high-shipping costs.

Wine Pop-Up Returns to 122-Year-Old “Buschenschank”

In 1904 a wine tavern or “buschenschank” was operating at Lainzerstrasse 7 in Vienna, and I am bringing it back in the form of a pop-up wine bar.

From 23-25 July I will be serving free wine tastings from 10 Austrian wineries including my own — bottles will be available to purchase for takeaway. Doors are open from 18hr - 23hr. For those of you in Vienna, I hope to see you there.

Prost!

So what is orange wine you ask? Great question. It’s wine made using the same techniques as red wine, but with white grapes.

Still confused?

Don´t feel silly if you thought it’s wine made from the same fruit that you enjoy with vodka as a screwdriver or with breakfast in the morning. 🍊🍊🍊

Red wine gets its color from the reddish-purple skins of the grape. When the grapes are pressed the skins are left in contact with the juice and the compounds known as anthocyanins are released. Separate the skins quickly and you have rose or a light red wine, leave them on longer, and you have a more intense red wine. Still with me? For orange wine, it’s the same but with white grapes.

The Orange Crush grapes were harvested in September and with the help of my cousin Laura (see below) they were foot stomped. After the grapes are crushed we left the skins and the juice in the tank for about a week and this along with time and oxygen creates an orange/amber colored wine.

Orange Crush 2025

My first orange wine is 80% Riesling, 20% Müller Thurgau. The Riesling comes from two vineyards that I rented in Kremstal and Kamptal and the Müller, which is actually a 175-year-old Swiss grape variety, was purchased from my friends at Feldtheorie. According to the lab analysis the wine is exactly 12% alcohol and I think it smells like apricot marmalade with a tangerine-ginger taste.

Orange Crush is bottled in 500 ml stoneware bottles, which are inspired by the ancient kvevri used in Georgia to produce orange, or as they prefer, amber wine, 8,000 years ago.

If that sounds like something you would enjoy you can already put your name on the allocation list - no payment necessary. You can sign up here with just your name and email address. Each bottle is 17.50 (USD, EUR, CHF) and I will ship at the end of this year.

I expect to have 68 x 500 ml bottles, so it’s extremely limited. For those of you who have already asked to be on the allocation list, I have added you, so no need to fill out the form again.

My other two wines from the 2025 vintage are still resting in amphora for several more months — more details soon.

Back in the Vineyard

After a historically dry early spring, we have seen a bit of rainfall, but are still -22 mm below the 30 day average. I replaced around 20 Chenin vines that didn’t survive the winter, but in general bud break came and went and we are now waiting for the critical flowering stage, which produces the grape clusters we know and love.

We offered a polite “oui”, when asked by a twenty-something French woman with a pierced septum and bejeweled front teeth at the wine pop-up we co-hosted in Paris last year.

Back in 2025, for the entire month of February, approximately 40 Austrian wineries participated in the first Le Austrian Wine Pop-Up. Our goal was to engage with Parisians, share stories about Austrian wine, and if we are lucky find an importer.

We had no interest in comparing Austrian to French wines, but to simply present them as alternatives. After all, France is the second largest wine market in the world at 23 mhl (OIV, April 2025), and yet less than 1% of Austrian wine is imported into the country.

The pop-up was designed to be different than typical wine events, such as Paris Wine Expo or Raw Wine. For starters, we chose to host it in a trendy coffee shop in the fashionably hip Marais district, where it would sit between boutique shops, art galleries and boulangeries. The central location was also critically important to remove any intimidating factors to attract a younger demographic, the opposite of elbowing for room at a fair to get a pour while struggling to hear the winemaker explain bâtonnage. At our pop-up guests could sit down for hours, ask as many questions as they wanted, all while relaxing comfortably and tasting the more than two dozen wines on the menu with some bread and Austrian cheese. Furthermore, the tasting was on a tip basis for everyone and therefore easily accessible, especially for budget-conscious Parisians.

The first pop-up in 2025 proved to be a resounding success: a total of 518 guests—from students and sommeliers to wine shop owners and retailers—took part. While success wasn’t measured in the number of wine bottles sold, we did establish a long-term international business relationships between an Austrian winery and a UK-based wine retailer, therefore it was clear that we could build on our momentum for a second round in 2026.

Paris Pop-Up 2.0

This past February from 1 to 21, 49 wineries, from all across Austria, including boutique wineries took part in the second edition of the pop-up in Paris. Once again, we were open every evening from 6 p.m. to midnight, and both wine experts and consumers, had the opportunity to taste 63 different wines. Similar to last year, only tips were requested, but this time we had a VAT number making it possible for anyone to purchase bottles.

Each week, we featured a new menu, and wines were served by several producers and wine professionals, including the authors of this article. Each of us studied the fact sheets on each wine to be as knowledgeable as possible and we added personal anecdotes and stories about each of the winemakers, including the unforgettable inspiration behind the name of the Small Crotch Winery in the Weinviertel region. The combination of wine knowledge, wit, and enthusiasm was very well received by the guests, who rewarded us by purchasing nearly all of our inventory.

Over the course of 21 days, we sold 411 bottles worth almost €10,000 to 509 guests. On average, customers purchased €50 worth of wine – 100% of the proceeds from the pop-up gets transferred back to all the participating wineries. Demand was particularly strong for both orange and red wines, the later was surprising considering the global trend. Another interesting data point, nearly 50% of all purchases were for bottles priced between 16-20 EUR and cuveé wine sales had a slight edge over single varietal Grüner Veltliner 88 vs 79 bottles sold.

Marketing was done via Instagram and word-of-mouth, thanks to the active Austrian community in Paris, including the Austrian Embassy, Austria Tourism, and the Kulturforum Paris.

This year we also offered guests the option to make reservations, and 147 did with several of them rating us.

We hope to repeat our success later this year in additional European cities. If anyone thinks an Austrian pop-up wine bar would be of interest in a particular city please let us know.

I’ll close with this terrific quote from blogger Jon Cellier, who attended the pop-up one evening with his colleagues:

“The Austrian Wine Pop-Up isn’t just an event. It’s a masterclass in wine discovery and marketing. Instead of waiting for sommeliers and importers to discover them, Austrian producers are showing up in person. They’re pouring their wines. They’re telling their stories. They’re inviting Paris to taste what they’ve been missing.”

On the ride back to the boat they admitted that the Austrian wine that gets imported into Canada, in their opinion, is “uninspiring” and “rubbish” — tough words coming from Canadians, who are known for their politeness. But the experience today completely changed their opinion after tasting wines from from Nord und Süd and Weingut Feldtheorie, buying a bottle from each of them. The couple also commented on the passion that both wine growers had for their craft, which is something they often miss when visiting large producers. It was the perfect way to end the season.

Slow Fermentation

Meanwhile back in the cellar my two amphora and steel tank, which combined are about 150 liters, are slowly finishing fermentation. More precisely, I had samples analyzed at the lab on 10 November:

UPDATE 8 January 2025 - Lab Results Comparing 10 Nov vs. 8 Jan

Since the 10th I’ve tasted them a few times and they are nearly all dry, but after a bâtonnage or lees stirring today the bubbles started popping again, so we aren’t quite at the finish line just yet.

2024 Vintage Around the World

I would be remiss not to thank everyone who ordered my 2024 vintage. To my utter surprise I only have 9 bottles remaining in the cellar, and yes, I kept two for myself.

This year I shipped, in no particular order, to France, Scotland, England, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, USA, Albania and of course Austria. Here in Vienna I borrowed my wife’s e-bike and delivered the wines to meet both existing customers and new customers who found me on Reddit and Instagram. I am also thrilled to have been indexed by the popular wine website wine-searcher.com.

And soon you will find Kapitel Zwei Wine at a restaurant in Vienna and at a wine shop in Paris, which are both big milestones for me personally.

Speaking of Paris…

Based on the success of the Le Austrian Wine Pop-Up this past February, which you can read about here, we are going back to Paris — even bigger. 44 wineries from all across Austria will be represented again at Fringe Cafe in Paris from 1-21 February.

From historic wineries to small, boutique growers, me and several other wineries will be there to showcase classical to low-intervention wines from Gruner Veltliner and Riesling to Zweigelt pouring sparkling, red, white, rosé and orange wines — see the full list here. Wine tastings are free and a limited number of bottles will be available for sale.

If you are planning to be in Paris for RAW Paris or Paris Wine Expo please come by. We will be open every evening from 18hr until midnight — and this year we are taking reservations.

That’s all for 2025. Wishing everyone a fantastic close to the year.

Prost!

Chris

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I wanted to send this newsletter out several weeks ago to tell you all about the harvest. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, because the harvest only finished on 28 September. Once again Mother Nature had other plans.

I keep forgetting the role of patience in viticulture. Last year we harvested in early September with enough sugar in the grapes to produce a wine with 13-13.5% alcohol. This year if we picked at the same time, the grapes would only produce a wine with 9-10% alcohol, barely qualifying as “wine” in the E.U. — the legal minimum is 8.5%.

The late timing of the harvest caused multiple unforeseen challenges. My family came from New York from 8-18 September to help, 10 days too early. Thankfully, they did experience a harvest helping out my friends at Weingut Feldtheorie. My cousin even had the chance to do a little old-fashion foot pressing on the Zweigelt (Austrian red grape variety).

The other challenge was my Weinzierlberg Riesling, the 1/3 ha vineyard I rented this year. I had hoped to produce some 500 liters from this vineyard, but with the later date and several days of rain, many clusters succumbed to botrytis, a fungus, which can be used to make wine, but it doesn’t fit my style. So instead of 500 liters I have to settle for about 100.

Harvest 2025

Okay, enough negativity.

The wonderful news is that we have tons of Chenin Blanc! Okay, maybe not tons, but when you carry 54 kg (120 lbs) down a steep slope if feels like a ton.

Last year I only had 5 kg (11 lbs) of Chenin, so this is great progress considering the vines are only three years old. Which means, insert drumroll…finally, my Grüner Veltliner/Chenin Blanc blend will have more Chenin than Grüner, which is a nice milestone. I’m curious to see the impact on taste and aroma. Both are now in an amphora and hopefully fermentation will begin in the next 24-72 hours. Special thanks to Marie-Helene for help with the harvest.

The 2025 vintage lineup, hopefully, also includes an orange wine made from Weinzierlberg Riesling and the Swiss varietal Müller Thurgau and, I’m adding a third wine, made from 100% Riesling from Weinzierlberg and the small Riesling plot I have in Kremsleithen. I say hopefully because the orange wine is a bit slow to ferment at the moment, hopefully it will start soon.

2024 Vintage Bottled, Waxed and Labelled

Thanks to my mom, the 2024 vintage bottles have been waxed and all of the labels have been stamped, which means they are ready to drink soon. If you signed up for the allocation I will send a payment link in November with shipping to follow in early December.

I am still trying to secure a shipping partner for the USA. Currently, I can only ship in New York. For those of you outside of New York I will keep you posted. European orders are no problem.

If anyone still wants to order, I have about 10 bottles remaining of each, just click below to sign up - no credit card needed.

• 2024 Dilemma (Riesling)

• 2024 No Alibi (Grüner Veltliner & Chenin Blanc)

Prost!

Chris

Following two successful pop-ups wine bars in Paris back in February and April, which you can read about here, I hosted a similar event in Vienna between 26-28 June. Only three-days, as opposed to an entire month in Paris, and in Hietzing, a quieter and less hip part of Vienna, compared to the uber-trendy Le Marais, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the results speak for themselves.

Across three-days we had 123 guests who purchased 89 bottles totaling 1,516€ of wine. In addition, I received a few hundred euros in tips for my efforts — and if you believe Instagram followers are a type of currency, I added around 40 followers to my account. And while not measured in Euros and cents, I met and had dozens of conversations with people who live in my neighborhood, who no longer ignore me and offer a friendly “guten morgen” when we walk past each other on the way to the bakery in the morning.

How Did We Get Here

Back in May I was offered, for free, a small art gallery space from M2K, a museum quality frame shop, from the owner who knew about the Paris pop-up. It’s located at Maxingstrasse 3, just at the end of a pedestrian street with a small restaurant directly across and 7 minutes from the u-bahn and tram — and, best of all, conveniently 5 minutes from my apartment.

As you can see in the photos below, the space has an industrial-chic aesthetic with exposed bricks, cast iron coat hooks and subway tiles.

Now that you have the basic concept, let me list some concrete tips, in no particular order:

• Location: Check with local art galleries or community centers which will benefit from the additional foot traffic. The location should be easy to reach and find, have a bathroom, drinking water, dishwasher and refrigerator. I brought in the tables, stools and chairs, except for the large table in the top left corner above. And I purchased 24 wine glasses, which combined with my own stock, gave me 45 in total — you never want to run out of clean glasses.

• Cost Structure: Wineries donated 6 bottles for the free tasting and then supplied me with 6 or 12 bottles for sale at full retail price. Bottles not opened or sold would be returned to the wineries and 100% of the sale price went directly to the winery.

• Wine List: Knowing that Hietzing is an older demographic, I didn’t want to alienate my neighbors and make this a “natural wine pop-up”, but of course I also wanted to attract the younger market, therefore, the wine menu reflects a plethora of styles including sparkling, white, orange, red and rosé, produced both classically and naturally/low intervention. I also offered no alcohol wine and low alcohol sparkling tea. All of the beverages are certified organic or undergoing certification and being in Austria I also focused on mostly small, boutique producers from the state of Lower Austria. The reason was simple, I picked up the wine and will return the unsold bottles, and I didn’t want to drive across the entire country. I also kept the menu simple, only listing the vintage, wine name, grape variety, alcohol by volume (ABV) and bottle price. I didn’t want to intimidate the non-wine experts breaking down regions, or sustainability practices or even tasting and aroma notes. I preferred instead to verbally provide this data to have a dialogue with them — if they wanted to know if it was “barrel-aged” or “kept on the lees” I had the information ready or if they simply asked for something “refreshing” I could deliver.

• Marketing: To promote the pop-up I employed both traditional and digital media. Postcards are inexpensive to produce and with a little help from ChatGPT I put together the design below using the prompt “Create a pop-up wine bar logo in the style of Roy Lichtenstein”, I then added the text and rearranged the graphics to fit the postcard dimensions. The concept was simply, pop-art for a pop-up. I also made some window stickers, which were not only helpful for our guests to find the pop-up, but were also attractive for social media posts from guests, as you can see in the video below.

In addition, I spent around 100€ on boosted Instagram campaigns, which you can see here. On Instagram I built a target audience of 18-35 year olds, both men and woman, with an interest in wine or no alcohol wine in the Vienna area. I posted the first ad on 17 June and then followed up again on 24 June and 28 June using a mix of video and still images. I tagged all of the wineries, many of whom reshared and posted stories, and I contacted the accounts for Hietzing, who posted the content on their website and social media. I also put all of the content in a Google Drive and emailed it to the wineries so they could post everything directly. Finally, I made a very simple event website, which was linked to from the Instagram campaigns, but was also easy to share via WhatsApp and iMessage — this also drove an increase in traffic to my winery website, which was a nice bonus.

• Point-of-Sale: Nearly all bottle sale transactions were with credit card and nearly all tips were in cash. For the credit card transactions I used SumUp, which is a popular point-of-sale system in Europe. I used the Tap to Pay function on my iPhone, which SumUp takes a 1.69% transaction fee. It takes some time to set up the SumUp account to get all of the banking approvals, so do this well in advance. Stripe and Square offer similar functions based on your region. Just make sure you have Wifi or a strong cellphone signal or transactions can be delayed.

• Partnering: For the Paris pop-up I worked very closely with the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and Austrian Tourism, which is responsible for promoting Austrian wine and culture globally. Since I was in Vienna this time I needed less support, none-the-less, the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, offers maps of the wine regions and other branded merchandise like bottle bags and postcards, that I offered in the pop-up to give a more professional look and the maps were handy to showcase the specific wineries and where they are located. I would encourage you to partner with your regional or country-specific wine marketing organization for support and materials.

• Permits: (Updated 4 July) In Paris, we hosted the pop-up at a venue with an alcohol license to both serve and sell wine, when the operator was with us. In Austria, it was easier for me, since I own a winery, but a license wasn’t required to serve wine at an art exhibition. Obviously, permits and licenses are going to vary greatly by region, so look into this, but the easiest solution is to host your pop-up at a location with a license or hire a licensed caterer and have one of their employees pour the wine. There are also 1 day permits in some US states. Get creative.

• Staff: Who is serving the wine is probably the most important tip. In addition to myself, one of the other winemakers poured along with my wife. I armed them both with a cheat sheet about how each wine is produced, which they could explain to the guests. I would say on average, most guests tasted 60-70% of the wines on the menu and stayed for 60-90 minutes and this to me is the biggest success. When compared to the big wine fairs where guests are attempting to taste while being pushed and shoved, at a pop-up you can have a dialogue and make a connection. Finally, whether it was Paris or Vienna, a three-person staff is the minimum to host the pop-up effectively without too much stress, while still keeping the glasses from going empty.

• Food: Similar to Paris, we offered free bread and cheese along with tap water. We don’t want anyone to get too tipsy. I also had some spittoons for pouring out or spitting. My budget was 10€ per day for bread and cheese.

So there you have it. Everything to host your own pop-up wine bar. If I missed something or if you have any questions, post them in the chat below and I’ll help as best I can. And if you have additional tips please also share them.

Good luck and Prost!

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Despite a very dry beginning of the year, in May the buds bursted open and are thriving in both the Kremsleithen and Weinzierlberg vineyards. I am pleasantly surprised by the number of inflorescence, or grape flowers, from the three-year old sémillion and chenin vines. They should produce 2-3x more grape clusters this year, assuming a successful flowering, where the caps fall off leading to pollination.

As for the roussanne, apparently Karl Dieter the #$%#@&ing (insert your own curse) deer is back and he loves roussanne as much as I do. Somehow Karl is evading my cameras and squeezing around the fence, so next year I will have to take securing the roussanne to another level. There are some organic bitter oils I can use or I will add fencing. Karl Dieter 2, Chris 0.

Weinzierlberg (in English: Wine Ornament Mountain)

It’s my first time working the old Weinzierlberg riesling vines and they require a bit of extra work, compared to my young vines in Kremsleithen. More specifically, they produce water sprouts and suckers, which are shoots that grow from undesirable parts of the vine, such as the trunk. This is not ideal as you don’t want grapes growing at the base of the trunk where they will either be eaten by animals or spread disease. In addition, they siphon water and nutrients, which need to reach the top part of the vine. I simply needed to walk through the vineyard and pull them off, but with 350 vines it takes time.

At the pop-up in Paris I learned about a sulfur alternative being developed in Portugal from chestnut trees. I will plan to test it with the Weinzierlberg wine for the 2025 vintage, which, if all goes according to plan, will be used to produce a skin-fermented orange wine. While I have no issue working with sulfur, as I have previously published, some people do. Plus, it’s interesting science.

Speaking of Weinzierlberg, I want to give a shout out to Gasthof Leindl and Toni Zöhrer. Gasthof Leindl just opened a bed and breakfast/lunch across from Weinzierlberg and they were kind enough to allow me to use their water for my vineyard — a huge saviour as the vineyard requires more than 150 litres of organic plant protection spay every few weeks to keep mildew away. If you are in Krems and are looking to have a delicious breakfast or lunch in a vineyard, check out Gasthof Leindl.

And thanks to Toni, my vineyard neighbor. He agreed to cut my grass — for free, saving me several hours of work. This is the kind of generosity I have come to greatly appreciate in the region.

Professor Chris!

Last week I wrapped up my first university teaching experience, and while I wait for my student evaluation, I think it was a success. For the final exam the winemakers from Urbanihof, our client, heard two marketing presentations from the students and they were overjoyed with the energy and ideas. In fact, Franz Paschinger, the owner of Urbanihof, offered jobs to the students to implement their strategies. I am already looking forward to next semester.

Wine Events

It wouldn’t be a newsletter without some new wine events to promote, right?

From 26-28 June I’m hosting another wine pop-up, but this time in Vienna. Again another example of Austrian generosity, an art gallery has offered me its space for free to host the pop-up. I’ll be pouring wines with friends for three-days, opening at 19hr at Maxingstrasse 3 in Vienna (U4 Hietzing). So please stop by, taste some incredible wines and meet the vignerons.

On 12 July, I am teaming up with my former IBM colleague Mirek Hazer and my former teacher Darrel Joseph to host a wine master class in Tyrol, Austria at Mirek’s trendy hotel called ELSA. Darrel is a wine judge and journalist and he will do most of the talking, I will just share my own journey to viticulture — no wine to share since my 2023 wine is sold out and the 2024 is yet to be bottled.

Speaking of the 2024 vintage…

Pre-Allocation for the 2024 Vintage

Nearly 70% of the 2024 vintage is already allocated. So if you want to get on the list just click below and fill in the “Notify Me” button with your email address and I’ll add you (nothing to pay). Both bottles will be 20 EUR, USD or CHF per 500 ml bottle, not including shipping.

• 2024 Dilemma (Riesling)

• 2024 No Alibi (Grüner Veltliner & Chenin Blanc)

Prost!

The details about the pop-up can be read here, but in brief, we hosted 518 guests in 28 days. The success of the pop-up convinced Jeff Hargrove, the owner of Fringe, where we hosted the pop-up, to open a natural wine bar on Friday and Saturday evenings. Fringe will pair Austrian wines with Korean rice cakes called tteok. It’s certainly unique and I can’t wait to try the combination when I return to Fringe for one week to pour Austrian wines from 7-11 April as part of an Austrian Tourism promotion in Paris. So if you are in Paris, please stop in an say, “bonjour”. The wine is free and I will be there every evening from 18-22hr.

Professor Chris?

After living in Paris for 6 weeks I returned back to Vienna to begin my new teaching job at the University of Applied Sciences in Krems. I complained so much, err, gave constructive feedback, that I was asked to fix what I thought was wrong.

The class of 31 students are doing real marketing projects for small wineries in the region, an idea I stole from my college back in the 90s.

My first class was on 24 March and I could barely sleep the night before. I was super nervous right up until class was over and three students came up to me telling me that they already know this is going to be their favorite class, which was gratifying to hear.

Back in the Vineyards

After last year’s late frost in May where temperatures dropped to -2C (28.4F) killing all of the early buds I am delaying my pruning until mid-April.

Vine plants love to climb so all of their energy goes straight to the apex or the tip of each cane. A cane can have 20 buds on it, which are normally pruned down to less than half, depending on the vigor, variety and age of the vine. But when cutting off the extra buds you risk that those remaining ones die from a late frost. By waiting, if buds #9-12 die I can rely on bud #4 to burst and produce grapes. If I prune now I lose that option. Of course this isn’t possible if you own a large vineyard, but since I am small I can easily prune everything in 2-3 days.

For the 2025 vintage I am also expanding. A local winery about 2 kilometers from Kremsleithen has six rows of old organic Riesling they are renting to me. The small plot is called Ried or vineyard Weinzierlberg, which is a premier cru site, known in Austria as 1.ÖTW or Erste Lage.

They’ve already been pruned, so my next step is to bind the canes to the trellis and hope we don’t get another late frost. So now you can see why spring makes me nervous.

Pre-Allocation for the 2024 Vintage

Nearly 50% of the 2024 vintage is already allocated. So if you want to get on the list just click below and fill in the “Notify Me” button with your email address and I’ll add you (nothing to pay). Both bottles will be 20 EUR, USD or CHF per 500 ml bottle, not including shipping.

• 2024 Dilemma (Riesling)

• 2024 No Alibi (Grüner Veltliner & Chenin Blanc)

Prost!

“Every year, European consortiums spend millions on agricultural promotional subsidies that go to trick out flashy new wineries, pay for wine swag and host junkets. I’ve seen the waste. Without pointing a finger, I’ll say that the money is not always well spent. Why not spend more of those funds to get good wine into the hands of young drinkers at reasonable prices in major urban areas? In other words, subsidize wine programs and restaurant-based events that greatly reduce by-the-glass prices. We need at least one Italian Wine Week, French Wine Week, Spanish Wine Week, Sonoma Wine Week, Tuscan Wine Week, Rhône Wine Week, Champagne, Crémant or Whatever Wine Week every week of the year!”, Robert Camuto, prize-winning American author and journalist wrote in Wine Spectator on 7 January 2025.

Little did Mr. Camuto know at the time of his article that a plan was already in place to host an Austrian pop-up wine bar in Paris, but our plan had a few amendments. For instance, our “wine week” would be a wine month from 1-28 February, open every day from 18:00 until midnight. And wine professionals and students can taste as much as they want for free and consumers pay only 10 EUR for the night — bread and cheese included.

A Pop-Up Grows in Paris

With an eye on bottling and selling my first vintage, my wife and I travelled to Paris in May of 2023 and what I saw was disheartening. After the twenty-fifth shop the same four to five Austrian wineries were on every wine bar menu and shop shelf. Kudos to the wineries and their importer, but what does this mean for the rest of us?

Upon further investigation, and according to statistics from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, the share of Austrian wine exported to France is 0.85 percent. France, the second leading consumer of wine in the world isn’t even in the top 10 and there are only three importers focused on Austrian wine for France. How could a small start-up winery tap the Parisian market with so many headwinds? Merde!

A bit rattled I found myself in Paris’s Le Marais district having a coffee at Fringe, a nine-year old specialty coffee shop. I found the metaphor of Fringe´s greyish-white, storm cloud ceiling lamps hovering above me dripping in irony — but then a bolt of lightening. What about a pop-up wine bar to introduce Austrian wines to the Parisian market?

The idea sat with me until we returned home to Vienna and a few days later I met with Robert Bormuth and Uli Filp. Two PhD scientists, turned winemakers, who launched Weingut Feldtheorie, a year before my own project. I shared my pop-up idea and they were excited to participate. In fact, Robert would join me for the month. Word quickly spread and the momentum carried us to 40 additional wineries from the main winemaking regions of Lower Austria, Vienna, Burgenland and Styria.

As luck would have it, the owner of Fringe was a fan of natural wines and since he closed every evening the coffee shop was available for rent — he also had a license to serve wine and a 200-year old cellar below that we could use to store everything. It was kismet.

Now I needed some wine. The pitch to the wineries was simple. If you are interested in the Parisian market, donate two cases of wine, and we will pour them and tell your story to everyone who will listen. No risk and no additional costs. In fact, if you want to travel to Paris and work at the pop-up you can even crash at our AirBnB for a few days at no cost. I made the same offer to friends and family who agreed to work with us and many of them accepted, including Donica Kelloway, a masters student at L'Ecole supérieure des agricultures. With some financial and marketing support from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board the Le Austrian Wine Pop-Up was ready.

28 Days Later

In summary, the pop-up was a hit. Every Saturday we featured 12-16 wines (click for menus) spanning sparkling, white, orange, rose and red. Surprisingly, most guests wanted the full tasting menu, spending on average 90 minutes, which indicated they wanted to learn and experience Austrian wine, not just consume it.

After 28 days we hosted 518 (Chart 1) guests including several chefs, importers from the Netherlands, Singapore and Korea, wine shop and bar owners, sommeliers, journalists, social influencers, wine club members and WSET students getting ready to take their level three exam.

Demographically, our guests were more women and I would say nearly everyone was between 25-45 years old. One big takeaway, very few, if anyone, knew about Austrian wine and even less about our local varieties, Grüner Veltliner, Zweigelt and Blaufrankish. The upside is everyone loved the wines. Low intervention wines were a big hit, along with sparkling Pétillant Naturel (Pet Nat) and orange wines, which many were tasting for the first time. We also offered some non-alcohol sparkling tea and zero percent alcohol Grüner Veltliner, which was appreciated by a handful of people who were extending their dry January a few more weeks.

Many guests were also unfamiliar with biodynamic and hybrid fungus and mildew resistant grapes, which reminded us that we have to get out of our wine-jargon bubble when explaining wine.

But to answer the question, “what did the three of us learn?”, for starters as an industry, we have to get out of our own way. We made drinking wine enjoyable and not pretentious. We greeted people when they arrived, jokingly saying, “we are serving Austrian wine, not Australian, so no kangaroos.” We explained our own unique journeys to the wine industry and we then guided our guests through the menu taking questions without so much as a snicker if someone didn’t know that orange wine doesn’t contain oranges.

And we told the stories of the wineries and the winemakers sharing anecdotes along the way, such as the 18th generation winemakers at Vitikultur Moser or Charly Rol, the Frenchman from Burgundy who is making wine in Austria after falling in love with a local.

If our guests wanted to go deeper into the winemaking process or the regions, we answered their questions and even had maps and handbooks with further details. But what we didn’t do was make them feel intimidated.

The pop-up also worked in-part because we came to our guests and we didn’t make them come to us. By hosting the event in a coffee shop, located in a trendy neighborhood, they were in a familiar space, instead of a fairground 60 minutes outside of the city centre.

So Mr. Camuto, I hope you agree, this is “a win-win wine proposal” that any region can do.

If anyone would like more details on how the pop-up was organised just ask.

Leave a comment

The bottles are for the Le Austrian Wine Pop-Up a crazy idea hatched a year ago. The idea was inspired by an article which stated that less than 1% of Austrian wine is imported into France — a strange fact since the French love natural wines and Austria has 24% of its area under vine certified as organic — that equals 10,432 hectares, the equivalent of 15,000 football fields, according to the Austrian Wine Marketing Board.

After sharing the idea with a handful of wineries the idea grew and grew, and we now have nearly 40 wineries participating (click for list).

For the entire month we are pouring Austrian wines from both small, artisanal to historic, multi-generational family wineries, at the Fringe Cafe in Paris on 1 February at 18:00. If you didn’t get a chance to taste my 2023 vintage I will have six bottles available for tasting.

The timing is also perfect as February will host RAW Wine Paris and the Paris Wine Expo, along with some smaller natural wine events.

For the past month we have been inviting sommeliers, wine shop owners, chefs, journalists, wine book authors, wine influencers, wine tour guides and importers, to attend.

If you have any friends or family in Paris please tell them to stop by and ask for me — I’ll be sure to give them the VIP treatment. You can share this digital postcard or this website.

2024 Kapitel Zwei Vintage

The 2023 vintage, an assemblage of Grüner Veltliner and Chenin Blanc, was called Alibi. A funny, not-so-subtle joke about the fact that I was in New York for my apprenticeship and not in the vineyard for the harvest in October 2023.

Of course this year, I was in Austria harvesting the grapes with Marie-Helene, my dad and brother, which means I have no alibi for the 2024 vintage, hence the 2024 vintage name No Excuses— if you don’t like it, there is only me to blame 😧.

The 2024 vintage also includes a 100% Riesling wine with grapes sourced from a vineyard I am renting in Kremsleithen, about 100 meters from Kapitel Zwei, and my good friends at Feldtheorie. I’m calling this wine Dilemma because I typically frown at the taste of a young, acidic Riesling, i.e. a difficult choice had to be made -- do I make a wine with Riesling or not?

Both wines are currently aging in separate amphorae on the gross lees (dead yeast) until the end of 2025, this is expected to reduce some of the acidity in the Riesling.

I expect around 100 bottles of each and while the aging continues you don’t have to wait to get on the allocation list.

Just click below and fill in the “Notify Me” button with your email address and I’ll add you to the list (nothing to pay) — for those of you who already contacted me you don’t need to do this again. Both will be 20 EUR, USD or CHF per 500 ml bottle.

• 2024 Dilemma (Riesling)

• 2024 No Alibi (Grüner Veltliner & Chenin Blanc)

I hope to see you in Paris if not you can follow along on Instagram with the #austrianwinepopup

Prost!

By mid-December all of the bottles will be shipped from the cellar into the hands of wine drinkers around the world including Austria, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa and the USA — pretty cool. Each bottle is individually numbered, which are hopefully being posted on Instagram with the #kapitelzweiwine so I know they arrived safe and sound.

What’s most remarkable, and taken for granted, is how easy I can ship a bottle of wine across the European Union, whereas in the USA shipping between states is highly regulated and requires a license.

To launch the wine, and to celebrate the first vintage, Kapitel Zwei Wine sponsored a few bottles for a Viennale party hosted by the Soho House at the Hotel Motto in Vienna. The Viennale is the annual film festival in Vienna and the Soho House rented out a suite to honor the occasion for its members. I was joined by my winery friends at Mantlerhof, Benita Sophia and Feldtheorie.

The evening was a lot of fun as I met people from the fashion, design and entertainment industries, including an Austrian actor who is expected to be in a new Amazon Prime TV series. There was also buzz that Willem Dafoe was going to make an appearance, but I was too busy pouring wine to notice - life is good.

Austria Drowns

A few days after I sent the last newsletter Austria was hit with massive flooding and the region of Lower Austria, where my vineyard is located, was declared a disaster zone. An entire year of rainfall fell in 96 hours. It was biblical. Simultaneously, my parents and brother arrived from New York to help with the harvest, which was now delayed for four days.

Thankfully, there was plenty of indoor work to be done including stamping all of the labels and preparing the shipping boxes. It was a great pleasure to share my new career with my family and to get them involved.

To quote winemaker Robert Mondavi, “Wine to me is passion. It’s family and friends. It’s warmth of heart and generosity of spirit. Wine is art. It’s culture. It’s the essence of civilization and the art of living.”

2024 Vintage

Eventually the sun came out and we harvested Chenin Blanc, Grüner Veltliner and Riesling with a few kilos of Roussanne and Semillon, which seem to be struggling a bit in the clay soil.

The 2024 vintage, which if all goes well should be twice as large as 2023, as I now have two amphorae fermenting. One 100% Riesling and the second, my second assemblage of Grüner Veltliner and Chenin Blanc, with a tiny bit of Roussanne and Semillon.

Thanks again to everyone who ordered the 2023 vintage. If you missed out I’ll make sure you are on the top of the allocation list for the 2024.

I hope you can share a sip with friends and family during the holiday season and it brings a smile to you as it did to me.

Prost!

Let me share few words about the vintage, which is named “Alibi” (click for the full story behind the name).

Alibi 2023 is a dry, white wine with one gram of sugar per liter. 95 bottles in total were produced — 90% Grüner Veltliner and 10% Chenin Blanc. The Grüner Veltliner was purchased from my friends at Weingut Feldtheorie and the Chenin Blanc is from Kapitel Zwei. Since the Chenin vines were only planted in May 2022 they are still young, with little yield. It will take another five years before they are mature.

While they are not certified, all of the grapes are 100% organic. They were handpicked on 10 October 2023 and spontaneous fermentation (fermentation with indigenous yeast) was completed after 10 days, followed by the malolactic fermentation (MLF) in amphora. MLF reduces the acidity of the wine, giving it a yeasty, brioche aroma and taste. The wine was aged in amphora on the gross lees (dead yeast cells) for 10 months.

I also refer to Alibi as a low intervention wine. Meaning, Nature was the co-vigneron and it was not filtered, so it may be a little cloudy — the cloudiness comes from the yeast.

Nothing was added to the wine beyond sulphites to keep it stable. Sulphites are a natural byproduct of wine fermentation and Alibi has 46 parts per million (ppm). For comparison, dried fruits can have as much as 3,000 ppm. French fries have more than 1,850 ppm and the legal limit for wine in the United States is 350 ppm (EU is 160 ppm for white wine). So if you are included in the 1% of the world’s population with a sulphite allergy you would sooner get a headache from dried apricots or fries before wine.

For complete transparency I am publishing all of the wine production details and the lab results here - there will be a QR code on every bottle to this page as well (translated into all EU languages)

Special thanks to Marie-Helene, Ulli, Robert and Mathias for all of their time and effort bottling.

Wine Allocation

I also want to thank everyone who pre-registered for a bottle of wine. It’s too hot to ship wine at the moment, so the bottles will stay cool in the cellar for a few months longer. In November I will begin emailing invoices for payment and shipping addresses — therefore, all bottles will be shipped by the end of November.

2024 Challenges Continue

Celebrating the bottling didn’t last long as I had wasps to deal with in the vineyard. The wasps, which are also a problem in Vienna, were draining the sweet berries until they were hollow. The eco-friendly solution was nets and sachets.

And the challenges aren’t just faced by me. Several wineries have already started harvesting on 30 August due to the wasps, which is nearly a month earlier than normal. I am planning to harvest in about 1 week. My parents and brother will be flying in from New York to lend a hand.

Now back to the vineyard as I prepare for my first harvest at Kapitel Zwei. The 2024 vintage will not be called Alibi. 😅😂

Prost!

Fast forward to 18 June 2024 and in a flash it’s over. Last week I successfully defended my thesis titled “Organic Banana Peel Compost as a Sustainable Source of Minerals for Young V. Vinifera”. In brief, my thesis experimentally demonstrated that solid banana peel compost can increase the availability of potassium in soil and increase vine vigor, specifically trunk thickness and shoot length, when compared to the control. Since I uploaded it on ResearchGate last week it already has 176 reads — not bad for a thesis. I hope the results give farmers and vignerons the motivation and confidence to source local fruit peel waste from any fruit and compost it for fertilizer, instead of using soil-killing mined chemical fertilizers.

I am also graduating with “distinction” based on my GPA being above 1.2, which considering my struggles with math early on, is satisfying. My next step is to apply to BOKU university to study oenology for two more years. I simply can‘t pass up advancing my knowledge for less than 500 EUR per semester.

I am also particularly proud that my classmates nominated me to give our class graduation speech yesterday during the ceremony on campus. It’s was tremendous honor.

Back in Kremsleithen

Back in the vineyard the vines are recovering nicely from the snowfall, late frost and hungry deer, from April, as the berries are rapidly maturing.

Not unsurprisingly the old Riesling vines, from the rental vineyard, will be ready for harvest probably by mid-September. I also discovered that the three vines on the sides of the tasting room are Grüner Veltliner and these are maturing rapidly with a high-yield count, which I will use in a blend with Chenin Blanc for the 2024 vintage.

Wine Tours

June also saw the launch of my new side-hustle — winery tours. To keep the Austrian finance department happy I am giving tours of small, organic wineries in the region to tourists. It’s a great way to promote the wine region and help me and my winemaking friends sell wine.

While I expected to only receive one or two gigs, I now have nine booked for the summer, from tourists visiting from France, Germany, Canada, Lithuania and the USA. My listing is on both Viator and GetYourGuide.

My first tour was last week and it was a big success, particularly because they tasted my wine and really enjoyed it. The Canadian tourist, who is a part time wine blogger and a full-time neuroscientist, described the wine as “creamy lemon, oily and brioche“, which is exactly the flavor profile I am aiming for.

We will be bottling up the 2023 vintage at the end of August and I am calling it “Alibi”. You may be thinking, “Alibi” WTF Chris! Well let me explain. As you probably know from watching too many cop dramas on TV an "Alibi" "is a defense of having been somewhere other than at the scene of a crime when the crime was committed". We didn't expect any grapes for the 2023 season from the young vines and as such I was in New York working at Paumanok Vineyards while Marie-Helene was working the harvest — which I think is a pretty good alibi, hence the name.

If you haven‘t already reserved a bottle or two, and are interested in one, go to this website and click “notify me“ and I will add your name to the reserve list. I owe plenty of bottles to all of the wonderful people who helped me and I already have two restaurants in Vienna who will be adding it to their menu, so it will be extremely limited — reserve one before it’s too late.

Enjoy the rest of summer. The next newsletter will be post-harvest and I won’t be away for it this time. 😇

Prost!

First it was the unusual weather patterns. The last week of March vineyard temperatures reached 22°C (72°F) and again a few weeks later in mid-April 26°C (77°F). The grapevines, like us humans, were confused and the dormant buds began popping open thinking it was mid-May. This outcome was manageable. If the weather continued it simply meant the grapes would ripen earlier and instead of harvesting in October it would shift to September. A quick text message to the family and friends who plan to help with the harvest alerted them about a potential change in schedule was all that was required.

Then on 17 April at 2:17AM my vineyard camera app chimed and a deer decided to make a morning snack of my young Chenin leaves and inflorescence or “grape flowers”, the first signs of grape clusters to come. %#&@$! The deer was walking along the rows like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet in Las Vegas. In the end, “Karl Dieter the Deer” as he is affectionally named by my German friends at Feldtheorie, demolished about 15 vines. Hopefully they will recover, but Karl needed to be stopped. The options were bazooka, dynamite or a fence. We chose the later and last weekend a two-meter high perimeter fence around the vineyard was installed and to really keep %#&@$ Karl away strategically placed sheep’s wool were placed all around the vineyard — apparently deer hate the smell. So now the vines look like they are wearing sweaters.

So in summary, unseasonably warm weather and a deer, okay, I can still breathe, but Mother Nature had one more challenge for Kapitel Zwei Wine in this early season.

19, 21, 22 April in the early morning hours the temperature in the vineyard dropped below 0°C (32°F) for between 30-90 minutes. And then %#&@$! snow. This was all catastrophic for the vines. Remember what I wrote earlier, the vines think its May, meaning the roots are absorbing water and nutrients, and at abnormal cold levels the water within the grapevine freezes causing the leaves to roll up and eventually die and fall off. Without leaves, no grapes. If the water freezes in the trunk the grapevines can even split apart. Thankfully this didn’t happen, but the vines are now in shock and will hopefully begin responding to the sun in a few days to weeks, but my best guess is that I will not see any fruit from about 40% of the vines.

Bottles Arrived

500 of my 500 ml bottles arrived last week. They will wait in storage until the end of the year for bottling. One of the labeled bottles was captured in aquarelle (water-colored paint) by my talented friend Catherine Pawlow (Instagram @cathpawlow). I liked the design so much I designed a t-shirt with it on the front — which can now be yours for only 20 EUR. 🤭

And finally…

To end this newsletter on a positive note, I submitted my thesis. 🥳 Hooray. 13,267 words, 53 pages and 106 references later. “Organic Banana Peel Compost as a Sustainable Source of Minerals for Young V. Vinifera” will be made public for your reading pleasure — assuming I get a good grade. The hardest part was laying out the text and charts in Word based on all of the formatting rules from my university. Roman numerals, spacing, citations in text and within the reference list — such a nightmare. It’s frankly amazing that any science gets published. %#&@$!

Prost!

But before school a quick trip to Paris to attend VinExpo Paris and RAW Wine. Both events are an opportunity to meet winemakers from around the world and to taste their latest vintages. RAW Wine is particularly interesting as it focuses solely on natural and low sulfur wines, strictly controlling the wineries who can participate.

But the real reason for the trip was to secure a location for Le Austrian Wine Pop-Up 🇫🇷. Did you know that less than 1% of Austrian wine exports is shipped to France? Sacrebleu! Indeed.

To rectify this atrocity and to launch my first vintage, from 1-28 February 2025 Kapitel Zwei Wine will host a pop-up wine bar in the heart of Paris. Joining us will be 27 other Austrian wineries where we will pour some of the best wines from the country, including red, white, rose, orange and pet nat.

While the general public is welcome to taste we hope to attract importers, wine bar and shop owners, sommeliers and restauranteurs — if you know anyone from these professions and want to invite them let me know.

We found a great location in the trendy Marais neighborhood. If you have dreams of working a wine bar in Paris send me an email as we may need a spare bartender or two — and if you parler un peu le français, even better.

Progress in the Cellar

I’m happy to report that the cellar transformation is nearly complete. We have gone from a filthy attic to what I like to think of as industrial chic?

The pink insulation was added to three-sides of the cellar to stabilize the temperature to prevent the fermentation from getting stuck. The insulation will be covered with a thin plywood in the coming weeks and then I will put a varnish on the wood for maintenance purposes.

The two tanks are 150 liters each, but it will be a few more years before I can fill them both.

I also upgraded to a larger solar battery. You can see it in the photo below powering the Wifi router in the top left corner for the weather station. Behind the green door, which will soon be painted, is where one of the amphora is located and where the bottled wine will be stored, keeping it chilled if you want to buy a bottle during your winery visit. It’s a tight space, built into the side of the rock — I’ll share some photos once I install the lights.

First Vintage, First Tasting

The 2023 vintage has been making progress in the cellar at Weingut Feldtheorie and on 17 January I tasted it for the first time. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was a nervous wreck and my hands were visibly shaking as we lifted off the amphora cap.

But all was well. At the time the wine was still undergoing MLF, but I already recognized the effects of the lactic acid with bready and creamy notes on the palate. I will taste it again in the coming weeks and keep you updated. The good news is that it didn’t smell like nail polish or horse sweat, which can result from nasty bacteria.

That’s all for now…back to writing my thesis.

Prost!

The first vintage will be a cuvèe of Grüner Veltliner from the talented duo at Weingut Feldtheorie and our own Chenin Blanc. After a little less than two weeks the must underwent spontaneous fermentation in a steel tank and now it’s in amphora where it is undergoing malolactic fermentation or MLF followed by aging on gross lees.

You may be thinking WTF does all this mean Chris? Okay, stay with me here…

MLF? As explained by Science Direct:

Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is an option that some winemakers choose, especially for the more robust wine styles. MLF is the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid leading to a reduction in acidity and the production of aroma and flavor compounds. As explained by Wine Folly, “one way to recognize MLF in a wine is to note if it has a brioche, creamy, oily mid-palate texture.”

What the heck are gross lees?

Yes, I agree it doesn’t sound appealing, but as described by Decanter:

Lees are predominantly dead yeast cells left over from the fermentation process, but there are two kinds.

‘Gross lees’ refers to the general sediment that forms in the wine after fermentation. Gross lees tend to naturally fall to the bottom of the winemaking vessel and are generally separated from the liquid quite quickly. Fine lees are smaller particles that settle more slowly in the wine, which can be filtered out or left in enhance the complexity of the wine.

Nutty aromas, such as almond, plus hay and yeasty flavours can all be the results of a wine spending some time aged on lees, or ‘sur lie’ as it’s known in French.

If you drink Champagne, then you have enjoyed the results of lees aging, as by law Champagne must be aged on lees from 12 months to three years depending on non-vintage or vintage.

So hopefully this answers both questions - what and why. I’m not big on young, high acid driven wines and I love bready, yeasty notes — and I hope you do as well.

From the Cellar to the Vineyard

One of the biggest stresses I faced while I was in New York was accurate and timely weather data for my vineyard. I was using three different weather apps and several municipal webcams located around the Krems region and each showed something different. Additionally, knowing that it rained wasn’t enough. In August when temperatures reached extreme levels I needed to know how much rain fell and when.

Luckily I know a handful of very intelligent computer engineers including my former IBM colleague Ronald Luijten. A quick email to Ronald was met with an enthusiastic response, “when do you need it?”

Six months and 2,000 lines of code later he over-delivered — and even came to Austria to help me install it.

As of a few weeks ago I now have my own solar powered weather station tracking rainfall, humidity and temperature on the hour. Using only 4 watts of energy it can run for nearly 10 days without any sunlight. As the data is collected it is uploaded to a website using my sim-card wifi router — I can also download the data as a .CSV file. If you are interested in having one built visit his website.

`Tis the Season

In addition to the weather station I added some additional branding on the side of the press room (see photo below) in the vineyard, which is visible from the street below to help potential customers find us for a tasting.

To celebrate our first vintage and the end of the year, here is a 10% discount code on all Kapitel Zwei Wine merchandise — just type FIRSTVINTAGE when you check out. Everything is organically made and shipped locally.

Thanks again for following along on this journey.

Prost!

I am apprenticing under, Kareem Massoud, the head winemaker at Paumanok Vineyards. This article in the Northforker describes the history of the winery:

Kareem was just 10 years old when he watched his father, Charles, make wine from scratch. It was a hobby born of necessity — IBM, his father’s employer, had sent him and his family to live in Kuwait for several years in the 1970s, where it is illegal to buy and sell wine.

By the time the family moved to Connecticut years later, winemaking had become a passion for the elder Mr. Massoud, one he was not eager to give up. An article in the New York Times about the Hargrave family and the vineyard they operated that launched the North Fork as a wine making region inspired Charles Massoud and his wife, Ursula — who came from a family of German winemakers — to buy their own piece of land on the North Fork. By 1990, they were owners and operators of Paumanok Vineyards, and in 2018, they expanded, purchasing Palmer Vineyards. Kareem, his wife, Karen, and his brothers — Nabeel and Salim — are now carrying on the family tradition.

Yes, crazy coincidence that Charles worked at IBM and retired less than 10 years before I started my own IBM career.

I’ve been working closely with Kareem, who was named winemaker of the year. Additionally, Paumanok also won Winery of the Year and the 2023 Governor's Cup. In fact, the Governor of NY State visited the winery a few days after I started. She presented the Cup to Paumanok for its 2019 Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc (see photo below).

Despite being an apprentice, Kareem has trusted me with some important tasks. For starters, I am conducting all of the lab analysis which he uses to determine when to harvest. This involves picking 100 random grapes from the different rows and then crushing them. I then measure the weight and the level of sugar as this will result in the percentage of alcohol of the wine.

Additionally, I am measuring the pH and titratable acidity of the juice which determines the acidity of the wine — low pH will result in tart and crisp wines, but more generally pH levels impact nearly all aspects of winemaking such as aroma, flavor and age-ability. I´ve also been inoculating the Muscat, Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc with yeasts, which takes up to 90 minutes as you need to slowly reawaken the tiny single-celled microorganisms.

And finally lots of cleaning. Cleaning the tanks, barrels, press and harvesting baskets using a combination of hot water, sodium carbonate or soda ash and citric acid.

6,000 Kilometers Away Back in Kremsleithen

Of course, Mother Nature is not waiting for me and the grapes at Kapitel Zwei Wine continue to grow and surprise me beyond my expectations, special thanks to Marie-Helene and Alex Türk for stepping in during my absence.

As you can see in the photos below the Chenin Blanc is looking juicy and healthy. About 10 days ago Marie-Helene recorded sugar levels at 20 °Brix on several of the grape clusters indicating that harvest is approaching. White grapes are generally harvested between 20–24 °Brix, which will result in a wine of 11–13.3% alcohol by volume.

Big VINTAGE News

After careful consideration and consultation with hundreds of wine experts Kapitel Zwei Wine is going to produce a 2023 vintage. 🎉

Okay, so not hundreds of experts, maybe two or three, but who cares, we are producing our first wine two years ahead of schedule and we couldn’t be more excited.

Kapitel Zwei Wine is partnering with our wonderful friends at Weingut Feldtheorie, Ulrike Filp and Robert Bormuth — who will be at RAW Wine in New York 12-13 November. The plan is to produce a white blend with Grüner Veltliner from Weingut Feldtheorie and our Chenin Blanc.

They will be pressed separately on the same day, fermented in steel tanks and aged for about one year in an 55 litre Italian amphora. If all goes according to plan this will result in 100-150 bottles — we are using 500 ml bottle sizes, I´ll explain why in a future newsletter, but it has to do with current drinking trends.

Once everything is in the tank I will put together a form for you to reserve what is sure to be a collectors item.

Wish us a successful harvest.

For the fifth semester, I will be apprenticing on the North Fork of Long Island, New York at Paumanok Vineyards. If you happen to be around come for a visit in late October and I will give you a tour before I head back to Austria on 1 November.

In the meantime, it’s been a wild growing season thus far in the vineyard. April’s showers became May’s showers and all of this rain has made for some major growth spurts in the vineyard. June was particularly hot and dry for the later half of the month so growth is now balancing out. But the real star of the summer is the Chenin Blanc. In fact, 17 of the 100 Chenin vines have produced inflorescence, which once they mature, become grapes. This means that if I am a little lucky, I should have enough Chenin to produce several bottles - a year ahead of schedule.

Putting the Fun in Cow Manure: The 500P

As I have shared previously, at Kapitel Zwei Wine we are avoiding synthetic fertilizers and are opting instead for organic and biodynamic methods, including the 500P.

On 28 May the cow horns were dug up after being buried for six months. The contents, i.e. the cow dung, is then stirred with rainwater for one hour (danke to Marie-Helene) and then sprayed on the soil of the vineyard. The result should be healthier soil with more microorganisms. I’ll be doing a soil test in 2024 to compare to my 2022 soil sample, so stay tuned.

Wine Press Delivery

A few weeks ago the 80 liter wine press was delivered. After considering a few options I went with a hydro/pneumatic press from the Slovenian company Lancman.

If you are curious on how it works, basically, the brick-colored rubber balloon, in the photo below, is enclosed in a steel cylinder. The balloon fills with either air or water and gently crushes the grapes against the inner walls of the cylinder. I was considering a wooden basket press, but they can be tricky to clean, particularly when I don’t have a lot of water in the vineyard to spare. For this reason I will be filling the balloon with air coming from a solar charged battery-powered compressor. If this all sounds risky it is, so I will be doing a test run with some table grapes just to make sure.

Red Clovers Everywhere

One way to add nitrates to the soil organically is with red clover, which was planted in the spring and as you can see below they are really loving the vineyard. While it will take about two years for the effect of the nitrates to be noticeable, the density of the clovers are keeping the soil from drying out. In a few weeks I will press them down so they seed the vineyard for next season.

And Now for the Big Transformation

If you can imagine, the schuppen “hut” was filled with 30-40 years of clutter from a crumbly sofa, to kitchen cabinets to tattered clothing. Close your eyes and imagine the cellar or attic of your grandparents — that was the inside of the schuppen. But here we are two years later and it looks pretty great. Check out more photos on Instagram.

We look forward to hosting you for tastings in 2025.

Next up is the cellar transformation. I am adding insulation to the walls to maintain cool temperatures between 12-20 degrees Celsius (53-71 °F) — yeasts can get stressed in hot temperatures producing off flavors during fermentation.

Many hours of stress transform in less than 3 seconds : )

Prost!

March and April have been dry and cold. That is until 14 April when the skies opened and a deluge of rain fell. I don’t have the official numbers yet, but my 225 liter rainwater collection barrel was over flowing.

Of course this monsoon was perfectly timed for the one hour drive out to Gols, Austria, to pick up two 150 liter steel tanks for the vineyard. The Slovenian-family made tanks from Zottel will be used for fermenting the juice prior to aging it in amphora. I want to give a special shout-out to my former IBM colleagues who gifted me a voucher to make this purchase possible. Veilen Dank! 🤗

Crimson & Clover, Over and Over

Meanwhile back in the vineyard, at the end of March I spread red clover seeds in the vineyard rows. Red clover is a rather useful plant for vineyards because “bacteria in the nodules of the red clover roots convert nitrogen from the air into nitrates”. These stored nitrates are eventually released to the companion plants, i.e. vines, which are essential for normal vine growth. So in summary, it’s an organic way to fertilize.

Amphorae Pick-Up

On 20 March we picked up two 55 liter amphorae from the world-class Italian producer Tava and as promised the Tava team gave a tour of the facility from the raw clay to the shipping warehouse.

I shared a photo collage on Instagram if you are curious, but the real highlight was meeting Francesco Tava, the founder and CEO.

His family owns a ceramic business, but he chose a different path — philosophy. He was a philosophy professor for several years, but one evening several of his wine making friends were complaining about the amphorae made in other parts of Europe. That fateful evening, which apparently lasted until 4 am, transformed his career. He started off with a few pilot projects, where experts and winemakers carefully studied the clay, the porosity and its impact on aging wine. A decade later Tava amphorae are everywhere.

My First Setback

I didn’t plan to tell you this, but I don’t want you to believe that my Chapter Two doesn’t come with some disappointment.

Prior to buying the land for Kapitel Zwei Wine I rented a very small vineyard called Ried Limberg and planted 50 vines. It should have been a learning exercise for me until something bigger came along. Sadly, the farmer who was hired to care for these vines, while also teaching me, dropped the ball and all of the vines died. I was in so much disbelief that when I saw the Ried, two weeks ago, I spent 30 minutes thinking that I was in the wrong location.

After several terse exchanges with the farmer I think the result is positive. He agreed to give me the 2024 and 2025 harvest of 60 Riesling vines. The vines are 20-25 years old and are within walking distance of Kapitel Zwei Wine, so I expect that I should be able to produce about 100 bottles. So the net outcome is that my first vintage will be a year earlier than expected with Riesling, which I will attempt to age in amphorae. It’s also a great chance to practice using all of the tools and techniques I’ve acquired over the past several years.

Kapitel Zwei Wine Coming to New York?

My fifth and next to last semester at IMC Krems is focused on practical training, i.e. an apprenticeship, which requires all students to spend 32 hours per week for 22 weeks working for a company in some facet of the wine industry.

As luck would have it, there is a winemaker growing Chenin Blanc 30 minutes from where my parents live on Long Island. After a few emails and a Zoom interview the owner and head winemaker has agreed to take me under his wing and I will be spending August to November on the North Fork of Long Island. I’ll share more details as it gets closer. Also another funny coincidence, his father worked for IBM for 25 years.

And don’t forget, I have some cool merchandise if you want to keep my accountant happy and help me create some marketing buzz.

Prost!