“Harvest good grapes at the right point of maturity and the magic of a millennia-old process can begin.” — Johannes Gross
In Austria, the Gross name is that of a well-regarded family with more than a century of winemaking history. And, as it turns out, a connection to the land stretching back nearly five hundred years. Johannes Gross is the sixth generation of the family to farm and make wine in Ratsch, a small municipality within Ehrenhausen, on the poetically hilly, verdant edge of Südsteiermark (southern Styria). It’s a place defined by climatic tension between the Alps and the Adriatic with steep, terraced hillsides, a mélange of volcanic and sedimentary soils, and a range of traditional Styrian varieties, especially sauvignon blanc. The family has holdings in some of Südsteiermark’s best sites, including the Große Lage, Nussberg, and the Erste Lagen of Sulz, Perz, and Kittenberg. The terrain demands intensive handwork, and yields are kept very low. After years of practicing, the estate is certified organic as of the 2024 vintage. In the cellar, the focus is on traditional vinification methods and extended aging. Single-vineyard wines are given a minimum of four years at the winery before release. The results are entrancingly aromatic, lively, by turns finessed and muscular and revelatory in their varied expressions of Südsteiermark terroir.
History
The Gross family’s roots in Südsteiermark run deeper than anyone knew. In 2019, a historian discovered that Johannes’s ancestors had worked the Nussberg from around 1550 until the late 19th century, when it was lost due to family circumstances. When Johannes’s father Alois purchased the Nussberg in 1986, he had no idea he was buying back the family’s ancestral vineyard. The site itself dates back even further. The first documented mention of the Nussberg is from 1289. The name doesn’t mean “nut hill” as one might assume, it originally signified “the hill that brings wealth.”
As we know, the 20th century brought upheaval. Before the World Wars, Steiermark had roughly 30,000 hectares under vine and was the largest wine-producing area in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When borders were redrawn after WWI, separating German-speaking and Slavic-speaking areas, most of the Gross family’s vineyards ended up on the Yugoslavian side. After WWII, the border hardened completely. Families were split, and traditional distribution routes to cities like Maribor were suddenly inaccessible. Steiermark’s vineyard area collapsed to around 2,000 hectares.
Johannes’s grandparents had to start over. Through a bilateral agreement between Austria and Yugoslavia, families economically devastated by the border changes were allowed to farm small parcels on the other side. His grandfather received 0.34 hectares on the Witscheiner Herrenberg, a famous steep site in what is now Slovenia, and immediately planted vines. This parcel, with vines now over 50 years old, remains in the family today. By EU law, grapes that cross borders lose all appellation status, so Johannes can only label this wine with the basic Austrian quality designation (thanks to a bilateral agreement signed by the two countries in 1953). But he still makes it and treasures it as a direct link to the family’s history.
In the postwar chaos, there was rampant fraud. Growers labeled wines with famous vineyard names and sites they didn’t have access to. Johannes’s grandfather responded by introducing varietal labeling, putting the grape name on the bottle instead of the village or vineyard. At the time, this was a progressive move: customers could trust what they were buying. It also meant a generation of Styrian wine focused on varietal expression rather than terroir.
In the early 1980s, Alois Gross, Johannes’s father, saw an industry defined by high costs and low quality. In this era before global warming, three or four vintages out of ten wouldn’t ripen at all. The average Steiermark winery farmed less than a hectare, and this moved many families to give up viticulture. Alois and a handful of like-minded growers decided to stay and change everything. They stopped adding sugar to mask poor fruit. They focused on the best sites, made completely dry wines, and let the natural freshness and aromatic intensity of the climate speak. When the Austrian wine scandal hit in 1985, Alois and his colleagues already had wines that showed crisp, clean, and mineral with a focus on quality. Consumers looking for trustworthy Austrian wine found it in Südsteiermark. Alois was a founding member of the STK (Steirische Terroir- und Klassikweingüter), an association of top Styrian estates committed to regional typicity and quality.
Alois handed over the estate to Johannes and Michael in 2006, when they were just 21 and 19 respectively. Alois knew from his own experience how important it is to be trusted to make decisions from an early age. In 2016, Michael, who had been developing the family’s Slovenian vineyards, decided to focus entirely on after a perfect vintage in his parcels (while frost destroyed 100% of the Austrian crop). In 2019, Johannes and his wife Martina assumed sole responsibility for Weingut Gross.
Johannes and Martina immediately made sweeping changes. They cut production in half, from roughly 300,000 bottles to 150,000, and from 50 hectares down to about 30, giving up rented vineyards and flatter, easier sites to focus exclusively on steep slopes and the best terroirs. They completed the shift to organic farming, achieving certification with the 2024 vintage. And in 2025 they introduced a new bottle shape (Burgundy instead of Bordeaux) and label design to signal a new chapter. “My wife and I did deep thinking about what footprint we would leave in the history of our family business,” Johannes explains. “She said, ‘You’re a farmer. I’m not a salesperson, I’m a farmer. I love to make the wine, I love to be in the vineyard, but office time is horrible for me. If we both want to focus on what we really love to do, we need to get smaller, to focus on what we love to do.'”
Johannes Gross
“When I was six, I wanted to become an astronaut,” says Johannes. “But I left the idea when I heard how long it takes you away from home. Today, it would be unthinkable for me.” Johannes wasn’t much older when, “listening to my father speaking about his wines,” he realized winemaking would be his future, too. “I didn’t study at university, but have done lots of work in the vineyards and cellars, travelled all over the world, and spoken with interesting people in the business.” He was also lucky to spend time with his grandparents, giving him perspective not just on his father’s approach but on what came before. For him, “happiness is … living amidst vineyards, wild orchards and groves, surrounded by family, doing affectionate and dedicated work.”
Johannes prefers the German word Herkunft to the French terroir. “Terroir is a French word, and there is no German term for it,” he says. “But Herkunft is a combination of tradition, culture, and a small batch of land. I think this expresses better what I mean.”
Martina Gross
Martina grew up on a cattle farm in the mountain areas of northern Steiermark. Her family is deeply rooted in agriculture, but not in wine. When she and Johannes married, she resisted the traditional path of the winemaker’s wife stepping into office administration. Instead, she chose the vineyards. “She brings in completely different ideas,” Johannes says, “influenced by what is not just good for the wine, but what is good for us. What impact does this decision have on our family?” It was Martina who pushed for the estate to get smaller and focus on what they love. Johannes quotes his grandmother: “The small decisions were always made by my grandfather, and the big ones were made by her.” He laughs: “I think it’s the same now.”
Martina handles much of the vineyard organization and runs the winery’s hospitality program, including seasonal terrace service featuring her home-cooked Styrian specialties.
Ratsch / Südsteiermark
Südsteiermark is a poetically verdant, hilly region that stretches from the regional capital of Graz, east to the edge of Burgenland, and south to Austria’s Slovenian border. Nestled between the Alps and the Adriatic, steep amphitheaters of vines alternate with meadows, forests, and small fields for a storybook landscape and unique wine culture. “Viticulture has been practiced here since the Romans and is still the number one economic factor in this region,” Johannes explains. Under the Habsburgs, Styria extended into what is now Slovenia, creating a vast viticultural area, split when political borders were redrawn in the aftermath of the two world wars.
Johannes explains the geologic history behind the distinctive terrain: “When the primal ocean retreated around nine million years ago, clay and lime were piled up in crisscross layers. Rivers and winds carried in gravel and sand, modelling hill after hill.” Soils are now a highly diverse mix of primal ocean and alluvial deposits: sand, gravel, marl (known locally as opok), and shell limestone, even some volcanic soils.
Ratsch is in the heart of Südsteiermark, one of three Styrian subregions, which is widely regarded as best suited to the sauvignon blanc, which is typically planted on the best parcels. Aromatic whites, including gelber muskateller, furmint, and welschriesling, are also among the subregion’s calling cards.
“There are two major challenges to viticulture here: the climatic and the topographical,” notes Johannes. “Unpredictable weather, extremely steep hills, and a wide variety of soil formations in our vineyards are both a challenge and a gift. We need 600 working hours per hectare, which is a multiple of other wine regions. The high location of the vineyards near the Alps makes us a true cool climate area. Aromatic, fresh wines with natural acidity and energy grow naturally with us. The grapes become fully ripe in this Alpine-Mediterranean climate, and due to diurnal temperature variations of up to 20°C, they possess both freshness and aroma.”
Farming and vineyards
The estate now farms just over 30 hectares, and were certified organic as of 2024. About 95% of holdings are in the village of Ehrenhausen, and roughly 90% of soils are limestone or coral reef origin. In a delicate climate, responsiveness is key. “We work each year a little bit differently according to crop, leaf, and soil management. We want balance in our wines, so we need balance in our vineyards. This also means less crop per vine – about 1-1.5 kg per vine. We are looking for a perfect grape according to ripeness, without botrytis. We believe that there is a perfect ripeness window. This window we try to catch.” The wines are above all fresh, driven by natural acidity and energy that, in Johannes’s words, “grow naturally with us” thanks in large part to the heat-trapping function of the bowl-like vineyards and the nightly inflows of starkly cooler mountain air from the Alps to the west.
Johannes points out: “We find big differences between the soils in our village of Ehrenhausen, which are strongly calcareous with marl and limestone, and our vineyards in the neighboring village of Gamlitz, where you can find gravel and sand, and very aromatic, early accessible wines grow.” Gamlitz is where you can find their gelber muskateller.
Rootstock selection has become increasingly important as climate shifts. Johannes has been removing vines planted by his father on SO4 rootstock, which pushes ripeness two weeks earlier. A trait no longer desirable in a warming climate. He’s returning to rootstocks his grandfather used and experimenting with others, like Fercal, that help moderate vigor and extend hang time.
Vineyard Sites
Ried Nussberg: The home vineyard that surrounds the winery, and, as the family discovered in 2019, their ancestral land since the 1550s. First documented in 1289, the name originally meant “the hill that brings wealth.” The total site is about 9 hectares, and Gross owns approximately 6.5 hectares. It’s a bowl-shaped basin ranging between 370 and 460 meters above sea level, with south and west exposures and slopes that can be extremely steep. Some of which were terraced by Johannes’s father in 2000. The geology is unique in Südsteiermark: layers of volcanic tuff are interspersed with the calcareous marl (opok), and the groundwater has such high sulfur content it’s undrinkable. An unusual combination of calcium and sulfur that Johannes believes profoundly shapes the wines. Average vine age is around 30 years across the site, but the Nussberg bottling draws from vines averaging 40–45 years. This is the top wine of the estate.
Ried Sulz: One of Südsteiermark’s largest sites (over 30 hectares total) and its warmest. It’s protected from the cold Alpine winds that sweep in from the west. South-facing and open to the east, the site heats up significantly during the day. Gross owns approximately 4.5 hectares here, with an additional 2.2 hectares in a lower section that goes into the village wine. Soils are heavy chalk-bearing clay, conglomerate, and sandstone. The family began acquiring parcels in 1962. Average vine age is 25–30 years (with the oldest vines from 1989). Johannes describes Sulz as warm and inviting on the nose with floral and spice tones, and a structured clay palate. “It’s the first step into the world of our single-vineyard wines,” he says, “because it’s so inviting.”
Witscheiner Herrenberg: The family’s original vineyard, 0.34 hectares purchased by Johannes’s grandfather after WWII on what became the Slovenian side of the border in the village of Svečina. It is extremely steep, with austere opok soils and vines over 50 years old. Johannes cannot use any appellation specific designation under EU law since it crosses the border, but thanks to the Gleichenberg Agreement of 1953, wines from this site can at least be marketed as the basic Austrian quality wine. He still makes the wine as a tribute to the family’s history.
In the cellar
“In the cellar, we go back to the techniques my father had at the beginning of his time as a winemaker,” Johannes says, and increasingly, even further back. He studied winemaking texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries that his grandfather learned from. Before WWII, the books said, easy-drinking wines should be consumed in the first year, but wines from great sites and great vintages needed long cellar time. Up to six years in barrel was normal. Postwar technology (filtration, earlier bottling) changed that practice. Johannes has returned to the old model: “Maybe heading back to the old idea of leaving the wine its time, giving it time on the barrel, brings us nearer to what is our true expression of the terroir.”
Each vineyard block is vinified separately. Vessel choice is determined by the needs of each wine, not by doctrine. The estate’s barrel stock consists of oval casks of 900, 1,200, and 2,400 liters, aged between 20 and 50 years. Johannes buys from the same Carinthian cooper his father and grandfather used, and still knows the family personally. The oak is less toasted than typical French oak, so the first three to four fills are used only for press wine. After that, the barrels can last 50 years or more if kept full. The last barrel Johannes replaced was made in 1947 and purchased used by his grandfather in 1952.
All the sauvignon blanc wines are destemmed, given a short maceration, and gently pressed. They ferment slowly and spontaneously in traditional wooden barrels, then mature for 12 months in large wood and six months in stainless steel. All wines go through malolactic fermentation. Sulfur is added minimally, and only just before bottling. Johannes uses bentonite for fining, which allows him to skip filtration and reduces histamines. Single-vineyard wines are given a minimum of four years at the winery before release, which is far longer than the typical 18 months, allowing terroir to fully express itself.
The winery maintains extensive archives of older vintages, releasing them periodically when they reach optimal maturity.
The Gamlitzer Gelber Muskateller hails from the neighboring village of Gamlitz, where the soils are gravel and sand, giving highly aromatic and easy-drinking wines. The grapes are briefly macerated before undergoing a gentle press cycle. Spontaneous fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks where the wine remains and matures for six months on the fine lees.
STK Classification
Gross is a founding member of the Steirische Terroir- und Klassikweingüter (STK), an association of twelve Styrian estates committed to regional typicity and quality. The STK system classifies wines into tiers, from fresh regional wines (Steirische Klassik) to village wines (Ortsweine) to single-vineyard wines. At the top are Erste STK Lage and Große STK Lage, the latter requiring a minimum of 18 months of aging before release. Gross holds Große STK Lage status for Nussberg and Erste STK Lage status for Sulz, Perz, and Kittenberg.
Gross & Gross: Jakobi
Johannes and his brother Michael (who leads the family’s winemaking at Vino Gross, just over the border in Slovenia) collaborate under the name Gross & Gross. Their Jakobi project honors both sauvignon blanc, Südsteiermark’s signature variety, and the agrarian traditions of the region. For this wine, they buy grapes from small producers and use stainless steel and controlled fermentation to emphasize fresh fruit. These wines are meant to show earlier and drink easier.
The label is a woodcut-based pictograph that recounts the significant details of each vintage (weather, lunar cycles, planting, pruning, harvest) in traditional iconography. It is based on the age-old Mandl (little figures) calendar, once created for the illiterate and still a feature in many homes in the region today, including the kitchen of Johannes and Michael’s grandmother when they were boys. The wine takes its name from Jakobi (Saint James), whose feast day typically coincides with veraison and is celebrated in Ratsch on July 25 each year. According to tradition, wooden windmills are erected on this day in hopes that their rattling noise will keep birds away from the ripening grapes.
