The first thing I do after landing in Vienna is set off to see Jutta Kalchbrenner (née Ambrositsch) about her wines. I find her inside her Buschenschank, or wine tavern—just opened for the afternoon’s service and still tranquilly empty—at a table, drying glasses. She greets me and asks if I’d like something to eat. I’ve not had a thing since an airline coffee, drunk in another time zone. Yes, please.

She shows me to a seat on a small terrace. It’s a gorgeous late May afternoon. Soft breezes rustle a flowering chestnut tree. A ladybird picks its way across the emerald tabletop.

In short order, a tray appears, laden with small dishes, most of which Jutta and her husband, Marco—both passionate cooks and eaters—have prepared: smoked trout, the delicate skin scrolled back like an opened fish tin; Liptauer, the curdy, piquant spread ubiquitous in Austrian wine taverns; a plate of shaved tongue dressed in chives and pumpkin seed oil; sturdy slices of rye bread; local cheeses.

It’s a carousel of pungent, salty, fatty bites that play sublimely to the Ur-Viennese atmosphere and, as I’ll soon taste, the Ambrositsch wines.

***

Wine is central to Viennese culture. In part, this is because the Viennese have a lifelong intimacy with their vineyards. They function in the way that parks do in other cities: as green oases to walk, play, and picnic in. Out of this connection has grown one of the most legitimately green wine cultures in the world—urban or otherwise. Nearly a third of the capital’s vineyards are farmed organically or biodynamically. Why? The Viennese wouldn’t stand for anything less.

Jutta, a soft-spoken outsider, makes an unlikely champion of these traditions. Yet, in the 15 years since she started tending to vines here, she has joined the ranks of Vienna’s most established wine families—Wieninger, Zahel, Christ—thanks mostly to humility and hard work.

Born in 1974 and raised in Austria’s mountainous south, at age 15 her family moved east, to Eisenberg in Burgenland. There her parents managed a forest and kept a little plot of vines. “My first contact [with] wine,” Jutta says as she tells me how she got to know a few producers, among them leading lights Krutzler and Wachter-Wiesler.

She left for Vienna to study graphic design, got a job in the field, and wound up falling in love with the capital. “You get the best of country and city,” she says, enthusiastically. “You can experience nature and be part of it, but also catch a great film at night.”

She spent the summer of 2004 in Eisenberg tending a small vineyard. “That was when it became clear to me that I wanted to make this wonderful work my profession.” From there it was all pretty much “learning by doing,” she says—reading, asking questions, and training with esteemed producer Hans Nittnaus in nearby Gols.

Back in Vienna, Jutta started the hunt for vines. Her timing couldn’t have been better: the early 2000s were the cusp of Vienna’s wine renaissance and she was able to snap up plots that might now be the object of serious competition. She convinced ageing growers to part with their best old-vine parcels, winning them over with the sincerity of her commitment.

As a newcomer to the scene, she had to be strategic. “[My] winemaking is pure networking. I own no cellar, no press, no pumps,” she tells me. “To buy my own equipment of the quality I would want would be so expensive.” So, she shares—with some of Austria’s most talented winemakers: Rainer Christ, whose family has been making wine in Vienna for 400 years, and third-generation winemaker Peter Bernreiter look after her wines in their cellars.

“We grow and harvest the grapes, which are delivered to their cellars, pressed, and pumped into tanks. The wines ferment and are bottled there. But I always determine how the wine is made. Every step of the process happens after we’ve agreed on it. This,” she says, with glowing understatement, “just seemed the more intelligent way.”

Today, Jutta cultivates a total of 4 hectares, scattered across Vienna’s hilltops in the way of breeze-borne seeds. Smart, selective seeds, having landed in many of the city’s best sites: Rosengartl, Riesenberg, Sievering, and Bisamberg. Her oldest vines (“I love old vineyards”) date to 1952, and most are planted to Vienna’s vinous calling card: Gemischter Satz, the wine that is also truest to her heart.

““It’s no wonder our vineyards are so well cared for. We have 2 million inspectors here.””

— Rainer Christ

Literally translated as “mixed set,” Gemischter Satz is an old form of farmer’s insurance: plant an assortment of grapes and harvest them all on the same day to guarantee that if some varieties fail, others will thrive with variations in ripeness bringing complexity and contrast to the wines. The grapes are then co-fermented for convenience. There is good reason field blends like these were the standard throughout Europe until single varieties pushed them aside around a hundred years ago.

Vienna never fully let go of this tradition. In this century, Jutta and a handful of other producers have made it their mission to elevate quality by zeroing in on single vineyards, careful farming, and intuitive cellar work. In 2013 Wiener Gemischter Satz was awarded DAC (Districtus Austriae Controllatus) status—a first for a wine style, rather than a geographical area—and a place in the Slow Food Ark of Taste, a mark of its importance in preserving biodiversity and the culture of small-scale farming.

In the glass, Gemischter Satz’s shining virtue is its ability to capture vintage and vineyard in multiple dimensions. In filtering all varieties through the same soils, weather, and farming, it conveys a site’s complex personality.

While the wines can be made from Grüner Veltliner, Riesling, Weißburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Welschriesling, Neuburger and more, many of these mixed parcels also harbour a trove of historic Austrian varieties. Two-thirds of Jutta’s holdings are field blends and her parcels host some true rarities, like the hyperlocal Kahlenberger Weiße, and a few varieties that still evade identification; some she suspects were experiments from the nearby wine research institute in Klosterneuburg on the outskirts of Vienna.

***

Vienna’s geography and climate seem to have predestined it for grape growing. The cool, hilly Vienna Woods and Danube breezes balance warm, central European summers. The city’s earliest vineyards date back to 1132. By the Middle Ages, it had become that rare thing: a city based on farming.

Today, it’s 650 hectares of vines are concentrated in the leafy northern districts, where commercial growers and hobbyists cultivate everything from anonymous vest-pockets to world-famous single vineyards—known in Austria as Rieden.

Among these, a stunningly high proportion are farmed biodynamically (15%) and organically (30%), with proximity and good governance to thank. Having vineyards within city limits has given the Viennese a sense of ownership: a unique familiarity with the vines.

As Jutta’s winemaking partner Rainer Christ points out: “It’s no wonder our vineyards are so well cared for. We have 2 million inspectors here.”

Moreover, nearly all of Vienna’s vineyards lie within a belt of legally protected forests and meadows. They are shielded from development and growers are mandated to maintain them to preserve the continuity of the city’s wine culture. In its wisdom, the city even offers a bonus to growers who convert to organics.

***

Jutta invites me for a little vineyard tour. She carefully navigates us through the steep lanes that wind through the vineyards of Mukenthal, acutely aware that cars are the invasive species in this heavily pedestrian environment.

“When we started out,” Jutta explains, “We harvested with friends and family on the weekends. If we had eight people, we could pick a vineyard in a day. That’s gotten harder now that we have 4 hectares.”

Nevertheless, all work is resolutely organic, if uncertified, and by hand—most often Jutta’s own. To maintain the slender profile and moderate alcohol levels of her wines, aspect, elevation, and steady breezes are her allies, but she is also attentive to canopy management and ready to harvest earlier with each new vintage.

Standing with her atop a few plunging vine rows, the ground blazoned with red clover and verdant grasses, pastel houses and a baroque chapel poking through the treetops in the near distance, all of Vienna spreading beyond, it’s clear what keeps her committed to taking such chances.

***

Buschenschank is the Viennese word for wine pop-up (distinct from permanent wine taverns known as Heuriger). Both trace their origins to 1784 when Kaiser Josef II permitted wine-growing families “to pour wines of their production” to earn a little extra money. Visitors brought their own fare and washed it down with a glass of the latest vintage.

Jutta’s “Buschenschank in Residenz,” as she calls it, is open just a dozen or so weekends a year. She doesn’t own a permanent space, but finds unused taverns, rents them out, and reanimates them, like switching on the lighting of a long-empty theatre and putting on a play.

Her current tavern is in Grinzing—a deliberately provocative choice. “This area has a terrible tourist reputation,” Jutta explains. “So it’s really nice to do something surprisingly good.” After walking past the neon signs and busses parked outside other taverns in the neighbourhood, I see what she means. Her motto, “Natürlich in Grinzing” is a clever poke, too—a reference to her organic farming and minimalist winemaking as well as a play on “natürlich,” which also means “of course” in German.

““Gemischter Satz’s shining virtue is its ability to capture vintage and vineyard in multiple dimensions.””

Her tavern gives you the feeling of having climbed straight into another era without any false nostalgia. The modest building, dating back to around 1920, is painted in colours of moss and stone, with original tiling, tables, clocks, mugs, glasses, curtains. It’s an ideal setting in which to appreciate wines that are themselves time travellers taking us back to a Mitteleuropean simplicity. Flavour and texture, refreshment and vitality are their hallmarks. Not showy, but arresting nonetheless.

We start with the 2018 Sieveringer Ringelspiel, bottled just three weeks before. Still rambunctious, but highly drinkable, this old-vine Gemischter Satz has a fetching floral herbaceousness and a welcome, grippy edge. It’s a dashing contrast with the 2017 Rakete, a cool, scarlet swoosh of energy hailing from just five rows of Zweigelt, St. Laurent, and Merlot vines in Jutta’s nearby Mitterberg vineyard. It’s silky, spicy, and peppery, but with killer freshness. “The name,” Jutta points out, “Is also Austrian slang for slightly drunk.”

At this point, my notes begin to shift from careful technical details to ever more emotive loops and underscores. “LOVE!” I block-letter above the 2017 Fürchtegott Gemischter Satz, in which Zierfandler, Riesling, and Welschriesling harmonise divinely. The name refers, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to a sense of reverence “between hope and fear,” in reference to the balancing act of skin contact, partial whole cluster fermentation, ageing in large old oak barrels, zero filtration and zero added SO2.

By the time we finish tasting, the Buschenschank is full. A dog curls under a chair, toddlers weave among the tables, soft laughter and clinking fill the air. Jutta has gone back to work, serving her guests. The light is fading from the sky. I take one last absorbing look around before reluctantly stepping back into the 21st century.