Making Wine From Nature: A Conversation With Josef Mantler of Mantlerhof Winery

For Josef Mantler, winemaking is more than just a job—it's practically ingrained in his DNA, considering his family has been cultivating grapes for over 700 years. The present estate, located in Krems, Austria, was originally a Sterian monastery, acquired by the Mantlers two centuries ago. 

The family takes a "less is more" approach in both the vineyards and cellar, letting the wine naturally reflect the character of each vintage. They've practiced organic farming since the 1950s, officially becoming certified in 2009. Additionally, 60% of their land remains uncultivated, which contributes to a balanced, biodiverse ecosystem grounded in healthy soils and teeming with local wildlife.

Josef Mantler visited Grape Collective to discuss the changing climate, a topic that keeps him up at night. Yet, he’s optimistic about the future of winemaking in Kremstal and excited about some very promising developments in the Austrian wine industry.

Lisa Denning: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of your family's estate? 

Josef Mantler: Our family was always in farming during the Middle Ages in Europe. Virtually everybody was a farmer. My family had the luxury of being free farmers, so we weren’t bound by any nobleman. We know that the family was in wine growing since the 1300s as we have a contract stating that a Mantler bought a small vineyard close to the city of Krems, which is still our whereabouts to this day, so they were somewhere around the city of Krems, but we don't know exactly where. 200 years ago, there was the opportunity to buy a small farming stead, a small monastery from Sterian monks who produced traditional wine north of the Alps in the further parts of Austria. So my family bought it, and we've been there for 200 years. So we've always been farmers with a big house. 

What generation are you?

Directly traceable? Since the 1600s—we have had a couple of Catholic priests in the family who took a lot of time and effort to trace the lineage. But I'm the sixth or seventh Josef in a row on the farm where we are today. Very uncreative naming! 

Did you always think you would go into the family business or was there a time where you were thinking of something else? 

Actually, most of the time I was not thinking about becoming a farmer. I was very lucky that my father never pushed us into the family business. He was always very generous when it came to supporting any of our interests. He would've allowed us to study anything and even if we wanted to become something like an actor, he probably would've supported it till the end. But during high school it started to dawn on me that wine growing is a very exciting job. So I probably decided when I was around 18 or 19 before going to university that I want to stay in the family business. My father was very happy, but he would've never pushed me. 

Can you tell me about the terroir of your region? 

The terroir in Kremstal is quite diverse. So if somebody asks about what the terroir is, it's like please, don't ask. But the Kremstal style, since there is so much diversity, is very difficult to explain or get across as a very concrete point. But our village is a very fertile sediment of chalk dust from the ice ages, which was collected on a mountain of solid rock. So on top, we have chalk dust; beneath it, we have chalk rock. And it's quite fertile. It has very good water-saving capacity, but as soon as you go into the next village, it changes completely. So the Kremstal is a very diverse, very interesting wine growing region. And for us, it's loess. Other winemakers in Kremstal will tell you a completely different story. 

What is your philosophy of viticulture and winemaking?

Nowadays? Everybody says a very close-to-nature approach. We were lucky that it wasn't an uphill battle against my father and grandfather who weren't totally against any organic forms of farming. My grandfather even already wrote "nature wine," on the labels, so not natural wine, but wine from nature. In the ‘60s, the term was outlawed, but already in the ’60s, he didn't add sugar to the wine, he didn't temper it with acidity, and he tried not to work with herbicides. And so he wanted to have this on the label just to say we are not industry-made wines, since back then the technologies were increasing, the cellars were growing and more technology was being used. So back then, he already wanted to be a counterpart of this movement, but it took another couple of years until we became certified organic, which is still part of our identity.

We’ve been certified for 20 years now. So the vineyards are organic and when it comes to the cellar, we keep a low intervention approach, but still in a classic style like my grandfather started—we don't add acidity, we don't add sugar. We really want every winter and every weather condition to be reflected in every single vintage. And we ferment everything with natural lees and we don't add anything to the wine besides a little sulfur or filtration aids. So the idea is to produce wine close to nature in the classic styles and never have bacterial influx. We aim for a very clear line of aromatics, but not over-perfumed. Classic wine close to nature. 

Can you tell us about the grapes you grow and the wines you make? 

We are in Austria, so our bread and butter grape is Grüner Veltliner. It’s 50% of the estate, and it's not going to change. Grüner is just a fantastic variety to work with. It’s like Chardonnay, it can do entry-level, and it can make extremely complex, charming wines. Besides that, Riesling has always had a long tradition in Austria, but since the Germans developed a lot of self-confidence in the Rieslings, the global market share of Austrian Riesling decreased. I can only recommend people try Austrian Riesling. It has a very unique expression. It has always been here. Besides that, we've worked with a few very local grapes, foremost Roter Veltliner, which was also an achievement of my grandfather and father to keep this variety alive and with high-quality winemaking, which is a super local thing. It's one of those varieties you're probably going to hear more of from Austria in the future because it's resilient to climate change. It's an old local variety, a little bit forgotten, but now rediscovered because of the circumstances. 

I think many wine drinkers in the US are familiar with Grüner Veltliner. How would you differentiate the Grüner Veltliner from Kremstal compared to other regions, like Wachau, for example?

For Wachau, it's quite easy because Wachau always had a tradition of producing very full wines, going really into high ripeness, going into, for some wineries, a lot of botrytis, so it was always the very highly ripe maturity expression of Grüner. I think Kremstal, as I said with the terroir, it's a very diverse region, so you can't really say that's the typical Kremstal Grüner. But as Kremstal always had a difficult time marketing itself, we are lucky that we have a lot of boutique wineries since we couldn't rely on the regional marketing being strong. All the wineries really had to work on the quality being the driving point. So we are a very small, structured region with a lot of boutique wineries with very unique expressions. So if you're a wine geek going on vacation, I would suggest Kremstal because it's a very compact but extremely diverse region. To break it down to one style is pretty much impossible. 

What would you say your style is? 

We are blessed with very fertile soil. So, our style normally goes in the direction of having relatively low-alcohol wines with high acidity in an elegant way. Yet the loess always gives a little bit of extra oiliness to them, so they can be light wines but still have a little bit of body. So these are advantages, and we try to make elegant, clear, classic style wines, especially with Grüner. Everything is whole grape press to make the wines even bit a little bit more upbeat, a little bit more coming out of the glass, but without being unpleasantly loud. 

And what are you seeing these days with the climate and how are you dealing with the challenges? 

How are we all dealing? It's one of the topics that keeps one up at night. At home, we have had actually no winter really this year. There was one weekend where we had the stereotypical Austrian snowy landscape. And besides that, we hardly ever hit below zero degrees at home this year. So we are already faced in March this year with probably the earliest harvest in recorded history if spring doesn't get radically cold the next week on forward. But the biggest challenge is that the rain patterns have changed. We normally have rain in winter and summer, but now it has changed to spring and harvest time, which is, of course, very difficult from a fungal point of view and from a harvest point of view. And I do believe that there are still a lot of things we can adapt to. 

But a lot of those things are actions that are counterintuitive to our winemaker's education because most of the varieties were selected at a time when it was always about how to develop more sugar in the wines when we wanted to make bigger wines because the climate wasn't in our favor. And now the climate is so much in favor of producing high-sugar wines that a lot of things that we learned we need to turn around in our heads. We won't reduce yields anymore because there's enough heat that the wine can produce a lot of yields suddenly with a lot of sugar. So there are a lot of things probably to adapt to, but as we are limited to one production cycle a year, it's going to be a rocky path until we are there. 

So it's always a run against time. We learned a lot of things in 2018, which was probably the hottest year ever recorded in Austria, but ’17, ’19, and ’20 were not as hot. So we couldn't immediately put all the lectures we learned into effect. And now, when the next incredibly hot year hits, we can, for the first time, probably put the things we've learned in motion and then get the feedback if it's even the right idea. So, due to the long production cycle, it's very difficult to adapt. But I'm very optimistic because there are so many smart people in wine who will figure it out, but it's scary overall. 

And do you see yourself doing anything different than your father? 

It was always a struggle to be a young rebel because my father was born in the ‘50s, and of course, he's also a child of his time. But he never pushed me and my sister into the winery, and we never had any troubles with his style of wine or with his style of production. I think in some terms we are rather radicalized in the things he started, but overall we value his advice. He likes the wines we produce. 

What we probably changed most in the cellar are processes that we adapted due to climate change, but keeping the style alive although the circumstances are changing. So Dad produced elegant, full-bodied wines, and we want to produce this style, and we want to keep producing them, although the climate changes are making it more difficult. And the only thing that probably sets us apart is our father had zero tolerance for a little bit of tannin at the end of a wine. Whereas Agnes, my sister, and I appreciate it sometimes because we have a feeling that, in some cases, it adds to the drinkability of a wine—keeping the wish for the second glass alive. But that's probably the biggest difference in taste between us and our father. 

Your wines are very gastronomic. What do you feel are some of the best pairings? 

We have a broad range so there are a lot of pairings. When it comes to its styles, Grüner Veltliner is so diverse that there are a lot of things it can go with. But I think a medium-bodied Grüner Veltliner is a better match for seafood than Riesling, for example, because it cuddles up to the food instead of being a counterpoint. The same goes with vegetable cuisine or any cuisine that isn't intense in its flavors but where people normally appreciate the mildness of it. So Grüner Veltliner, for me, is a wine that can fit those categories perfectly. 

And then, a few of our local varieties, like Roter Veltliner or even smaller ones like Berger, often fit with herbal cuisine, which can be a great match. People who don't want to drink red but should order a light red with the food they're having can think about Roter Veltliner. So, there are niches for the wines that fit perfectly. And, of course, Grüner and Schnitzel is a match made in heaven. And if you land at the Viennese airport, there's a big poster of a boiled beef dish. And it is said that a hundred years ago, our last emperor, Franz Joseph, always ordered this boiled beef with a glass of Roter Veltliner. So it was the emperor’s favorite dish, along with the emperor’s favorite wine. 

You recently started making a sparkling wine, sekt. Can you tell us about that? 

There are several ideas as to why we did it. The most fun explanation would be to drive down the cost of our personal Champagne purchases. In our family, we drink a lot of sparkling at home, especially my sister. But the viticultural idea was, as we talked about before with climate change, that it's now very easy to produce high-sugar and high-alcohol wines. So, yield reduction in the springtime after blossoming is not the right thing to do. It's one of those things where we have to think differently than we were taught in school for multiple decades. So we thought about moving yield reduction after summertime, after the heat is done, and then instead of cutting it as a green harvest to the floor, maybe use it at some point. And then we said, ‘Yeah, let's do a little bit of sparkling,’ which is for me, a sustainable way to produce sparkling without allocating a whole vineyard to it.

Also, maybe we can increase the quality of the other Roter Veltliner, which we produce from this vineyard, by delaying yield reduction. So, it was a byproduct in some way. And as we are big sparkling drinkers, it’s also a bit of a passion project. It’s a very small quantity, and we do everything in-house. It's completely dry which suits our taste, especially my sister's taste. And so it's still a little bit in the experimentation stage also in terms of how it affects the dry wines we produce, the still wine we make from this vineyard. But if this experiment is successful, we will probably produce small-batch sparkling wines from other high-quality vineyards to reduce climate change's impact on alcohol levels. And I'm very curious if it will work out. 

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about? 

There's one very exciting development going on in Austria at the moment as Austria has passed, the second country to do so after France, a vineyard classification system. So it's really, really new. I think it has been in use for a couple of months now. It's going to be a huge opportunity for Austrian wine as the system France established is universally accepted, and especially for a variety like Grüner Veltliner, but also Riesling, which is known for having very different expressions depending on where it grows. 

I think it's a great opportunity and an aid to the customer to know that a little bit more effort went into this wine, which produces a very terroir expression, a very local expression of the variety. This adds another layer of transparency, so I'm very excited about it. 

There's also another layer of passion about this project in our family because our father and our winery were one of the seven wineries that founded the movement to introduce the system 30 years ago. The group of Austrian traditional wineries grew, and after 30 years, my father finally got to see that the vision he and his friends had for the Austrian wine market had transformed into a nationwide system of vineyard designations. So that's exciting. Especially, as you can imagine, France introduced the system 300 years ago while the ordinary farmer wasn't involved in the decisions. So we’re very passionate about it, but it will be a very hot year in Austrian wine politics and I'm really curious how the system will look in the end. But I think it's a huge opportunity for the Austrian market and for our terroir-driven local varieties and for all the Riesling drinkers in the world.