Category: Wineries

There’s a wide variety of wine tasting experiences that one can experience.  They include from quiet, almost meditational tastings in ancient facilities.  Others are like a night out or a visit to a family home.  And some just seem dedicated to fun, however one defines that word.  Brick Barn, in our opinion, fits into that latter category.

One of the patios at Brick Barn, showing the Spanish influence on the architecture.

The winery sits in Buellton, nestled in the Santa Rita Hills.  It is a new operation, founded in 2018.  The winery itself is a handsome, Spanish mission-inspired building, with a very large capacity for tasting visitors.  That size, and the variety of venues at Brick Barn define the wine tasting experience there.

The bar area at Brick Barn.

Let us describe several different experiences to be had at Brick Barn.  The first is a rather traditional.  There’s a tasting room with a bar, where you can enjoy a selection of their recent bottlings.  The selection of wines is quite varied, about which more later.  The tasting room itself is beautiful, with a large bar decorated in tiles reflecting both Spanish and Native American heritage.  The chandeliers and the assortment of interesting shopping add to the pleasure of the room.

The lounge area.

Visitors can have their wines served in another large room, decorated to resemble a private club.  It invites consideration of what’s in the glass and low-voiced conversation about it.  We have reason to believe that there is no rule of silence, however.

Tasting, picnicking, trees and views.

Then there are the three patios outside.  Here you can sit under umbrellas and spreading trees, admiring the views of Brick Barn’s vineyards and the Santa Ynez mountains beyond them.  (The parking lot in between doesn’t spoil the pleasure.  After all, the cars have to go somewhere.)  Visitors are invited to bring picnics, enjoy their tastings of a buy a bottle, and simply relax.  If that’s your idea of fun (and it is ours) Brick Barn is the place for it.

Finally, there’s party time.  Brick Barn is open most days from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.  In other words, it is the place to go for tourists and locals alike at the end of the day.  Happy hour can be very happy there and the tasting facilities can become a bit crowded.  There’s live music on weekdays and we’re told that the joint rocks until closing time.  It’s not our thing, but if it is yours, party hardy.

Brick Barn makes an enormous variety of wines: ten whites, two rosés, four sparkling wines and eight reds, plus four that they consider their top-tier wines, which they call Fatalist.  (In our opinion, that’s not the most alluring name for a wine.)  This variety is both a strength and a weakness.  It pretty much assures that any visitor will find a type of wine that they enjoy.  But, as we have said before about other areas of Wine Country, making too many types of wine often  undercuts the ability to make anything particularly well. 

We fear that that’s the case at Brick Barn.  Their wines aren’t to our taste, but that’s unimportant.  We write about the tasting experience, which is excellent there.  We’re not wine critics and evidently many people like the wines there.  So, if you’re in the Santa Rita Hills, you can have fun at Brick Barn.

In thinking about Heitz Cellar, our memories break down into two periods: when Joe Heitz was alive and afterwards.  Let us be clear that in both periods to vineyards produced world-renowned wines, particularly their Cabernet Sauvignons.  But the wine tasting experience became very different once Joe passed away.

Heitz – the winery and the man – are true pioneers of Napa Valley winemaking.  He founded the winery in 1961.  To put that in perspective, that was 15 years before the famous Judgment of Paris put California wines on the oenological map.  Heitz Cellar’s 1970 Cabernet Sauvignon was one of the American wines tasted on that historic occasion.

For most of its existence, the Heitz tasting room was an unassuming, sparsely furnished stone building on Route 29 in St. Helena.  The winery was generous in pouring many of their best wines, including the most famous one, the Martha’s Vineyard.  Joe Heitz believed that wine was for sharing and so tasting at his winery were free.  That remained the case until Joe’s heirs sold the winery to the Lawrence family in 2018.  But Joe lives on, on the Heitz Cellar labels, checking out his wines in the aging room.

The old Heitz Cellar winery, circa 1990.  Photo courtesy of Wine Spectator.

The Heitz winery today has been rebuilt as a sleek building and tasting room, not a Napa Palace but a long way from two barrels and a plank.  As is the case everywhere in Napa Valley, the tastings are sit-down affairs and there is a fee, one consistent with other top-end vineyards in the region.  Tastings are available at the original location, now called the Salon, and in the Vaca Mountain foothills, at what they term the Estate.

Tasting at Heitz’s Salon.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

The wines available for tasting lean heavily towards the Cabernet Sauvignons that made Heitz so well-known.  Martha’s Vineyard is still the flagship wine, and now has a picture of the old winery building on the label.  (Sadly, a former favorite of ours, the Bella Oaks, is no longer made.)  Some of what makes a visit to Heitz so exciting is that all their wines are sourced from single vineyards, so one can taste the regional variation in Napa Valley in the hands of a single winemaking team.  Oh, yeah, they have some Chardonnays and a Rosé too.  They’re not the reason to visit Heitz Cellar.

Power Tasting isn’t qualified to compare the wines the way Joe Heitz made them to those made with his name on the label today, but we can compare the experiences.  Previously, visitors were made to feel like Joe’s guests, sharing in the bounty of his vineyards and his winemaking skill.  The wines were and are powerful and elegant, but the experience was casual and down-to-earth.

A visit to Heitz Cellar today is more like dinner at a four-star restaurant.  It’s classy and makes one feel special, but it’s removed from the earth the grapes grew in.  (There is a vineyard tour available, so we guess that isn’t always the case.)  Honestly, we preferred the old way, but those days are gone and we enjoy the way things are now.

A word about the name.  It’s Heitz Cellar (singular) although we’ve always pluralized it.  We don’t know any other singulars.

We have been visiting Napa Valley wineries for some years – decades, in fact – before we even heard of Viader.  A colleague at work who also enjoys wine tasting put us on to it, with the warnings that it was difficult to find and difficult to get a reservation.  Perhaps we hadn’t heard of Viader because we had never passed it on Route 29, the Silverado Trail or the roads between them.  That’s because Viader is perched 1,400 feet above the valley floor on Howell Mountain.  You have to want to go there to go there; you won’t just be passing by.

The view from Viader Winery.

As to the difficulty of finding the winery, our colleague overstated the case.  You simply have to turn off the Silverado Trail at Deer Park Road and then keep climbing until you’re there.  It’s a bit tricky recognizing that you are there, as the winery tells you to “look for the rust-iron gate before the sharp, 15 MPH, hairpin turn”.  It’s worth the journey.

Power Tasting doesn’t review wines but rather the experience of visiting wineries.  So suffice it to say that Viader makes excellent wines from red grapes.  They don’t make a lot, so their wines are rather exclusive.  If you are a lover of big California reds, you’ll be happy with what you get to taste there.

However, what we remember most from visiting Viader is the ambiance and in particular the view.  For your tasting, you sit on a terrace overlooking the valley below, with vines in front of you and forest on the sides.  A server appears from time to time with another wine for you to try but you are left pretty much alone to soak it all in, feeling very happy to be left alone sipping the wine and admiring the view.  The prospect before you doesn’t overwhelm the wines.  Rather, the wine only enhances the experience.

Viader has an interesting back story.  Delia Viader founded the winery in the 1980’s, when female winemakers were virtually unheard of.  She saw the potential for wines made from grapes grown on Howell Mountain and took advantage of it.  She is still very much involved in the winery, but today her son Alan is the winemaker.  They suffered a tragedy in 2005 when an arsonist destroyed their entire 2003 production.  Fortunately, Viader bounced back and are very much in business today.

Viader doesn’t make very many wines.  Their annual production is around 4,000 cases and it consists of red wines made from Bordeaux grapes, in particular Cabernet Sauvignon.  (It is Napa Valley, after all.)  Cabernet Franc is also included in their flagship wine, known simply as Viader Proprietary Blend.  Other wines also feature blends of those grapes with Syrah and Malbec.

It is true that reservations are needed for a visit, as is the case these days at nearly every Napa Valley winery.  However, we have found that a same-day phone call can result in a tour of the vineyards, a tasting and that marvelous view.

Schramsberg is a multi-faceted winery.  It is famous for its sparkling wines but also produces, through a sister winery, Bordeaux-style wines and Pinot Noirs.  It boasts a history that extends back to the 19^th century but is really a product of the 20^th (surely a pioneer in Napa Valley terms).  They once called their wines “Champagne” but now refer to them as sparkling wines, although they were legally permitted to use the French word.  Here we will focus on visiting Schramsberg in Calistoga to sample their sparkling wines.

The grounds and house at Schramsberg.  Photo courtesy of WineMaps.

The property was indeed established as a winery in 1862 by a German immigrant named Jacob Schram.  Schramsberg actually means Schram’s mountain, which is a bit of an altitudinal exaggeration. The winery ceased operation in 1912 and wasn’t used for wine until Jack and Jamie Davies bought it in 1965.  (The sister winery is named Davies.)  A few years later they issued a sparkler labeled as “Napa Valley Champagne”.  Wineries that had used the term Champagne prior to 2006 were allowed to continue using the term; but the Davies, respectful of France, stopped doing so.  Their sparkling wine achieved prominence when they were the first American wine to be served at the White House in 1972.

All this history is an interesting background to a visit to Schramsberg. The first thing visitors see is an attractive garden, with a large Victorian house behind it.  These too were restored by the Davies, and it must have been their pride and joy, as well as their home.  It is overall a visual reminder of the winemaking history that Schramsberg represents.  Beyond the house is a stony entrance to the caves where the sparkling wines are aged.  Some of them are from the 19^th century winery, expanded by the Davies in their times.

The entrance to Schramsberg’s caves.  Photo courtesy of Self Tour Guides.

Touring the caves is a high point of a visit to Schramsberg, along with a tasting, of course.  There are 2½ miles dug into the hill, the first half-mile attributable to Jacob Schram.  Much like the French Champagne houses, Schramsberg ages its wines extensively, two years or more for their commercial production and up to eight years on the lees for their top wines, the Tête de Cuvée that they name for Herr Schram.  Using the French term for their top wine indicates that they still remember that they used to call their products Champagne.

The tasting consists of five sparkling wines, including – depending on the day – a blanc de blanc, a blanc de noir and a rosé.  Often there is a little something extra thrown in.  There is also a tasting available with three sparklers and three reds, which we’ll skip over for now.  Power Tasting does not review wines as such, but it is no surprise that these are among the best sparkling wines made in the United States.  They are definitely Californian, since neither the soil nor the caves have the chalk that give true Champagne its distinctive taste. 

It is best not to compare Schramsberg to a French Champagne.  Take pleasure in it for what it is, rather than for what it is not.  That’s good advice for enjoying anything, not just wine.

Generally, when we think of a winery, the image that comes to mind is a tasting room that is elegantly furnished with views of endless vistas of grapevines.  Or urban tasing rooms that are clubby and well-decorated.  There are two wineries in Santa Barbara that break that mold: Jaffurs and Carr.  These two are unmistakably operated in a factory-like setting.  They are in a light industrial section of Santa Barbara; there are no vistas at all, grapes or otherwise; and one of these is minimally furnished, if at all.

The entrance to Jaffurs Wine Cellars.

Jaffurs Wine Cellars makes Rhône-style wines in a facility that was purpose-built for winemaking by Craig Jaffurs in 2001.  It has a garage door opening, with an iron table just inside where they serve tastings.  The trend towards seated tastings by appointment only has not yet reached Jaffurs.  Visitors enter, wait for some employee to notice them and then are served a selection of Jaffurs’ rather extensive list of wines.

Just beyond the, er, tasting room, visitors will see the crush pad and beyond that fork lifts tending to the barrels of wine waiting to age and be bottled.  Unsurprisingly, Jaffurs does not get many visitors and so the vibe when people do come is real pleasure to show off their wines.  And we did find Jaffurs’ wines quite enjoyable.  Jaffurs sources all of their grapes from vineyards from the Sants Rita Hills to as far north as Santa Maria County.  Many of them have significant reputations, most notably the Bien Nacido in Santa Maria.

Jaffurs doesn’t make very much wine – only 5,000 cases annually – and so is not widely distributed.  Although the specialty of the house is Rhône grapes, which we liked, we found that we most enjoyed their Pinot Noir.  They don’t make a big deal of it, so you have to ask to try some

As for Carr Winery, we are being a bit unfair when we say that it  is a factory, although wine is made and aged there.  Their facility was originally a Quonset Hut in the same industrial area as Jaffurs, and was used to repair World War II aircraft.  There is a terrace outside but it is often used by a mah-jongg club, so we found it better to taste inside.  This is nicely furnished to look something like a trendy cocktail lounge.  There are artworks scattered about as well.  Visitors can easily forget that they are in a working winery in a factory district.

The Carr Winery tasting room.

Almost all of Carr’s wines are 100% single varietals.  There’s a little secret there: Ryan Carr, the owner and winemaker, also has a vineyard management business.  With the insight gained from that enterprise, he buys grapes – ostensibly the best ones – from his customers.  Accordingly, Carr makes wine from a wide variety of grapes, including the usual (Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah) and some that are less likely to be found elsewhere (Sangiovese, Cabernet Franc).  Winemaker Carr has a definite style; there is a clear consistency in all his wines, regardless of the grapes used.

So if anyone would ever get tired of beautiful scenery and surroundings, we recommend a trip to the East Side of Santa Barbara, where Jaffurs and Carr will show you wines with an industrial ambiance but countryside quality.

You can visit wineries in Bordeaux that are still owned by original families, but the Rothschilds of today, for example, are the descendants of the founders.  Even in Napa Valley, Robert Mondavi, Warren Winiarski and their like are no longer with us.  But one of the things that makes wine tasting in Santa Barbara County, the Santa Rita Hills in particular, is that the founding fathers (and mothers) are still making wine in their namesake wineries.

One such is the Melville Winery, owned and operated by Chad Melville.  The winery even offers a private tour and tasting with Mr. Melville himself.  You won’t get that at Château Latour!

Located in the Santa Rita Hills not too far from Buellton (although the address is in Lompoc), Melville’s tasting room is located in and beside a handsome, mission-style yellow building.  A tasting at Melville has the vibe of a garden party far more than that of most wineries.  Oh, they do have an indoor room that’s cozy in a rustic sort of way, but the real Melville experience is to have your tasting on their wide, capacious lawn.  [Melville also has a tasting room in Santa Barbara, which is a totally different experience.]  Although we were told that they occasionally receive tour groups and they say they can accommodate 150 people, it’s difficult to imagine it ever getting rowdy at this winery.

Rather, visitors either recline in Adirondack chairs or gather around widely spaced tables under white umbrellas.  They sip their wine viewing the vineyard and the mountains beyond.  So very civilized, especially considering the completely opposite experience in some tasting rooms, not least in nearby Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone.  Guests can even bring picnics. 

We were a bit surprised by the wines they serve at Melville.  Santa Rita Hills is rightly famed for Pinot Noir, which they do serve.  But we also tasted Chardonnay, Grenache and Syrah.  There’s nothing wrong with those grapes, but they weren’t what we expected.  We think this may say a lot about changing climate, even in such a contained space as the Santa Rita Hills, or maybe a broader audience for the wines made there, some of whom may not be Pinot Noir fans.  That said, of the wines we tasted, the Pinot Noirs were our favorites.

For a long time, it has been possible to taste quality wine in California far afield from Napa Valley and Sonoma County.  It seems to use that Santa Barbara County, and the Santa Rita Hills in particular, are coming (or have come) into their own.  There are wines we have tasted there, especially Pinot Noirs, that are the equal or better than any we’ve had in that state.  Now, we think the winemakers in the Côte d’Or can sleep well at night, but overall we find the Pinot Noirs made in the Santa Rita Hills to be more Burgundian than we have tasted elsewhere in the US.

Melville is an exemplar of the region’s arrival.  Power Tasting doesn’t review wine; our specialty is the wine tasting experience.  We can say that a visit to the Melville Winery is a lovely way to while away an afternoon with some well-regarded wines.

In 1805, François Clicquot died.  He had inherited a Champagne house from his father, and his widow (veuve in French), Barbe-Nicole née Ponsardin was left to run the company.  And wow did she run it well.  Under her direction, the company sold the first vintage Champagne, the first rosé Champagne and generally established sparkling wine from that region as the premier luxury drink.

If you visit the company now named for la Veuve Clicquot in Reims, you’ll learn all about the Grande Madame (yes, their top wines are named for her).  You’ll get to see the cellars where the Champagne is aged and you’ll get to try some rather interesting examples of the Champagne-maker’s art.  You won’t see vineyards or even well-tended gardens.  The entry to the winery is simple and architecturally uninteresting.  The caves are everything.

There is no tasting room as such.  All visits include a guided tour of the caves with a sample of Champagne at the end.  The caves are large openings within the tunnels, some of which date back to Roman times.  Others were dug under Mme Clicquot’s reign.  Many of them are decorated with sculptures and other artwork.  The guide explains the making of Champagne, including the process of riddling, which Mme Clicquot also invented.  (Riddling is the manual turning of the bottles to capture the dead yeasts from second fermentation in the neck of the bottle, to be expelled, leaving a clear beverage.)

The tour is interesting for a first-time visitor to a Champagne house (or even the better sparkling wine makers in the New World).  Once you’ve seen it and heard about it, there’s not a lot of new information to gather.  We will say that we appreciated the knowledge of the guide who showed us around and her ability to answer questions that weren’t on the script.

Guides serving Champagnes in the caves.

Veuve Clicquot offers four tours.  One is of their basic Yellow Label and lasts an hour.  Another similar tour focuses on rosé Champagne.  We took the one that offered more interesting wines to taste and lasted an hour and a half.  We must say that we were impressed by the depth and differences among the wines served.  There is also a two-hour tour that includes aged bottles.  The prices for the tours range from 36 to 160 euros.  These prices have increased a bit since we visited only a few months ago.

So is it worth it to visit Veuve Clicquot.  Yes, it is.  For one thing, when you are there you are on the spot in which Champagne as we know it today – clear, sparkling, elegant, festive – was invented.  For another, if you take a tour other than the Yellow Label one, you’ll get to experience otherwise unavailable wines in the caves.  There is a lot to be said for authenticity.  You can buy a bottle of Veuve Clicquot at home and you will enjoy it.  You can also buy a postcard of the Mona Lisa.  Same wine, same picture, but not the same experience.

It was around 4:00 pm.  We’d been walking around the streets of Santa Barbara pretty much all day, tasting wine as we went.  We weren’t driving and we could walk back to our hotel, so we could try one more tasting room if we wanted to.  Still, at that time, did we really want to?  Well, we did and we’re certainly glad about that.

The tasting room at Longoria on State in Santa Barbara.

We stepped into Longoria on State, which is the only tasting room actually on Santa Barbara’s main drag.  We were quite surprised at what we saw.  It didn’t look like a typical tasting room but more like an upscale cocktail lounge.  There were long banquettes with plush pillows, comfortable chairs and trendy tables.  It was a relatively dark room, with track lighting and a huge skylight to brighten it up.  The bar was long, tiled and served only wine.

The wines all come from the Longoria winery.  Frankly we hadn’t heard about Longoria before tasting there, but we learned that it was founded by Rick and Donna Longoria in Santa Barbara County in 1982.  Being among the pioneers of Central Coast winemaking, the Longorias influenced many other winemakers in the area.  They sold their winery in 2022 and the new owners, the Christian family, are responsible for the snazzy digs on State Street.  (There is another tasting room in Lompoc that we have not visited.)

As is often the case in California, Longoria makes a wide variety of wines.  There are several whites, a rosé, some Spanish-style reds and a few blends.  But the core of Longoria’s list is Pinot Noir, which is what we enjoyed the most.  All of them are from the Santa Rita Hills, which by itself is good indicator of the quality of the terroir.  For the most part, all the Pinot Noirs seemed rather elegant to us, with a range of fruitiness and depth among them.

To be fair, the wines we tasted were bottled prior to the sale of the winery, so there may be some changes coming.  We hope not, because we really liked what we tried.

The tasting room on State Street is relatively new, not there on our previous visits to Santa Barbara.  As mentioned, we arrived at the end of the afternoon; we walked right in and were served.  (The Longoria web site does ask for reservations, but as in much of California they’re not always needed.)  We have a hunch that later in the day the room may be more crowded.  Longoria on State is open until 8:00 most nights and until 9:00 on Saturdays, so that night club vibe might draw more patrons at later hours.

One of our greatest pleasures in wine tasting is discovering fine wines in unexpected places.  In that regard, Longoria on State meets both criteria.  We would certainly urge anyone who would like to explore Central Coast wines while in Santa Barbara to include Longoria on their itinerary.

Of all the Champagne houses we have visited – and that’s quite a few – Pommery feels the most Californian.  There is no Napa palace here but the architecture is palatial and it has its roots in the 19^th century.  The grounds are enormous and are dotted with artworks.  Pommery has added a large pavilion that shows that the proprietors have recognized that wine tourism is a business that attracts visitors to their brand.  (A word about those proprietors: You may see the estate referred to as Vranken-Pommery.  That’s because a Belgian fellow named Paul Vranken bought it in 2002.)  But the cellars are ancient and the Champagne is the real deal.

The grounds of the Pommery Champagne house, with its “art works”.

Pommery is located in Reims, in a sector where several other Champagne houses reside, so you can easily walk from one to the other. Be certain to line up your schedule, since all the houses offer tours combined with tastings.  The working property includes a Tudor-style castle and a French château.  The pavilion adjoining these buildings contains the entrance to the cellars, a chic restaurant, some exhibits concerning the history of the firm and a Champagne bar.  The most notable exhibit is called the Émile Gallé tun.  A tun is a massive wine barrel; this one holds 75,000 liters.  It was built to be shown at the 1903 World Fair in St. Louis and illustrates the friendship between France and the United States.

The pavilion at Pommery, with the Émile Gallé tun at the left and the Champagne bar in the center.

As mentioned, there are numerous artworks on the grounds although we were not enamored of the particular pieces being shown on our most recent visit.  The dedication to art, both 19^th century and contemporary, is carried through in the cellars.  These are reached via a staircase of 116 steps.  (There is an elevator for those who can’t handle the stairs.)  There is a history to the cellars, which were adapted from Gallo-Roman chalk pits.  As the guide explains how Champagne is made and what the various areas in the cellars are used for, much attention is paid to the art installed throughout.  Some of it is contemporary and edgy; others were installed when the cellars were created.

116 steps into the cellars!

Once the tour is over, you are led back to the pavilion where you can drink some bubbly.  A glass of Champagne is included in the cost of the tour, at various levels of quality and price.  Since each visitor gets only one glass, it’s not really a tasting, but it is possible to buy more glasses at the bar.  There are comfortable seating areas in the pavilion where you can enjoy your drinks.

There is a certain sameness to all tours of Champagne houses (or for those of domestic sparkling wineries, for that matter.)  All of the other attractions give a visit to Pommery a certain spice not found elsewhere.  So does the history of the Maison.  It was founded in 1836 and, under the management of the founder’s widow, it became one of the world’s largest producers, producing up to a million cases annually today.  In the 19^th century, all Champagne was intensely sweet, with up to 300 grams of sugar per liter.  Madame Pommery invented brut, which today must have less than 12 grams per liter.  It’s worth raising a glass to her at the winery that bears her name just for that achievement.

Before we introduce you to this particular winery, we’d like to say a few words about how we got there.  We visited Vienna for the first time and fell in love with the city.  Our purpose was not wine tasting, but as long as there was an opportunity to see some vineyards, we couldn’t resist (of course).  Quite frankly, we don’t usually like to take a tour for wine tasting purposes, but in this instance, we thought it was the best choice.  Not every winery we visited was worth reporting, but Weinbau Prinz (www.weinbauprinz.at) was a very pleasant experience so we’re pleased to share it with our readers.

Weinbau is a German word for viticulture or wine growing, what we would call a winery. This particular one is owned by Roswitha and Martin Prinz, who are from winemaking families stretching back for centuries.  Their small (3.1 hectares) vineyard is located in the village of Stetten in the winemaking district known as the Weinviertel, the largest in Austria.  The Weinviertel (“wine quarter” in German) abuts Vienna and this winery is only a 45 minute drive from the city center.

The village church in Stetten, Austria rising over the vines of Weinbau Prinz.

The wine tasting experience at Weinbau Prinz is highlighted by the setting.  Your party is seated at a long table right in the vineyard, with the steeple of the village church looming over you.  If, like us, you have seen scenes like this in the movies and were ever-so-eager to do it yourself, you’re hooked before you even take the first sip.

Tasting in the Weinbau Prinz vineyards.

The wines are poured by Roswitha Prinz herself.  (Martin is the cellar guy.)  Besides owning the winery, she is a lecturer at BOKU, which we gather is the Viennese university for viticulture.  She seems unfazed at answering questions from those who know little about Austrian wine or wine in general, as well as from wine snobs.  You get all kinds in the wine business, we guess.

Weinbau Prinz is proud to proclaim that they have been fully organic (or bio as they say in Europe) since 2018.  For a small vineyard, they make quite a wide variety of wines, ranging from the inevitable Grüner Veltliner, through a white blend they call, simply enough, Cuvee Weiss to some sparkling wines known in Austria as sekt.  Weinbau Prinz has a number of wines made from unusual (to us) white grapes, including Blütenmuskateller, Donauriesling, Cabernet Blanc, and Sauvignac.  Although the Weinviertel is primarily known for white wines, they also offer a few Zweigelts, a red grape more frequently found in Western Austria.

We’ll leave it to others to discuss the subtleties of aroma and taste of the wines at Weinbau Prinz.  Power Tasting is all about the wine tasting experience, not wine reviewing.  If your objective is an enjoyable hour well spent, in scenery that seems to come from the winemaking Tourism Bureau, we recommend Weinbau Prinz without reservation.  Oh, maybe a reservation would be a good idea, since they welcome tours.