Definitely Red

Vin de Garage from Châteauneuf

Andreas Lenzenwöger is originally from Upper Austria. He has worked as a sommelier at the Steirereck in Vienna and in top German restaurants. He gained his first winemaking experience at the Sattlerhof winery in southern Styria, where he tried his hand at biodynamic viticulture at the Pinot Noir vineyards there in the early 2000s. After a harvest at Domaine de Pegau, he was given a permanent position there and shortly afterwards was put in charge of the white wines. Success came very quickly.

Over time, the desire to make his own wines grew. Finally, he was able to acquire the best grapes from a friend from the 2016 vintage and vinify his first red wine, a single-varietal Grenache. To this day, fermentation takes place in open barrique barrels behind his house. These are then rolled down the small hill from his house to the cellar for ageing. Incidentally, the barrels are used barriques from Guigal. Today, six barrels of red wine and one barrel of white wine (100% Clairette) are produced each year.

We met Andreas by chance at the Pichler-Krutzler winery in the Wachau. Shortly afterwards, we noticed an excellent rating for the Definitely Red - Andreas Lenzenwöger winery from Rhône specialist Jeb Dunnuck, which prompted us to contact him immediately. Somewhat surprised by our interest, he agreed to allocate us a small quantity of his first vintage and to this day we are delighted every year with our allocation, which has grown but is still small due to the size of the winery. We recently visited Andreas and Maria and tasted the wines with them in their “cellar”. The quality was again more than convincing. The difficult 2021 vintage in particular was full of elegance and finesse.