Weingut Sommer

If heaven is a place on earth, it might well be in Donnerskirchen am Leithagebirge.

Leopold Sommer Junior led us up a path decked in cherry blossom, a buzzard circled over banks of wild herbs, insects sang and then the winemaker said: "This is my paradise". We understood him instantly. Our gaze wandered over Neusiedlersee and its hilly landscape. On the horizon were the prefabricated buildings of Bratislava-Petrszalka, on the right, in a haze, the television tower of Szopron and behind us: The Kingdom of Heaven. This is the name of the vineyard that Sommer revitalised a few years ago with his colleagues from Donnerskirchen, Bayer and Liegenfeld.

The ancient vineyard had been abandoned at some point in the 1950s because the tractors that were new at the time, in contrast to the older horse-drawn vehicles, simply could no longer cope with the incline. Afterwards, it returned to forest and was accidentally rediscovered while hiking.

Today, the speciality of viticulture in the Leithagebirge can be understood from here. Sommer, whose family has lived in the area since 1698, but has only been involved in viticulture for two and a half generations and actually, like most Donnerskirchen winegrowers, specialises in white wines, talks about the varietals of the area, its sometimes extremely barren, sometimes clayey soils and its hot-cold, humid-dry, all in all rather ambiguous microclimate. In one (already somewhat worn) word: Terroir. "Our DAC-Blaufränkisch is a good example: We want to put the origin very clearly in the foreground, so we have clear variations in style from year to year. We try not to let routine prevail. Every year, you have to take a new approach. If you come up with a plan in April until October and only do it because you've learned it that way or have done it for forty years, then you are producing bypassing nature and the terroir". In this sense, Sommer 2013 Leithaberg DAC stands out due to its mineral acid structure, paired with dark, but not exaggeratedly lush spiciness. The winemaker cautiously says: "The wine is certainly not a flatterer. It is special and definitely needs some explanation". Experimenting is better than studying.