Last November we headed out to Kamptal, a tiny winemaking region outside of Vienna, at the suggestion of one of our Instagram followers. We wanted to meet up with the founders of Nibiru wines, a tiny producer making Doomsday wine. Well, not really, but the most well-known story around what they’ve named their winery is the Nibiru cataclysm.
We rode up into Kamptal, through windy roads, steep hills, and heavy forests on a cloudy afternoon where we had a tough time even seeing the road in front of us.
Out of the fog rode Josef on his moped to meet us at the winery. Josef and Julia have created their own label using parcels they’ve gotten from Josef’s families’ vineyard, Weingut Schenter. They’re part of a larger group of Austrian producers we’ve seen follow a similar path, converting prior-generations’ conventional vineyards and viticulture into natural practices like the RennerSistas and GSELLMANN.
After touring the winery and learning more about the vinification process, we jumped into Josef’s SU-V and headed up to some of their best vineyards in the hilly mountainsides overlooking the town of Kamptal. Here they’re growing Riesling and have just planted new Pinot Noir vines (we can’t wait to get our hands on it!) The chalky limestone soil, primary rock, high elevation, and weather patterns are great for growing traditional cold-weather grapes like Riesling, Gruner Veltliner, Blauer Portugieser, and Pinot Noir.
Cloudy day in Kamptal
Julia and Josef's Story
Julia is from southern Germany and got her start in hospitality. Josef is the son of vintners and went to school for winemaking since high school years. They met in South Africa working for a harvest they were both working there. Because Josef already had vines at home in Kamptal, in 2015 they decided to return, convert the vineyards and produce their own wines.
Why Nibiru?
Nibiru is according to Sumerian writing the name of a planet that wanders through our solar system only every 3.600 years. It is the only planet that wonders the other way around the sun opposing to the rest of our planets. It is a name that appealed to them right away because it reflects their philosophy and the style of their wines. They are definitely going against the status quo in the wine industry, so we get the meaning here.
