Blaufränkisch & Zweigelt, Burgenland, Austria

Gut Oggau winemakers Stephanie & Eduard Tscheppe are deeply adored by natural wine lovers the whole world over and deserve every last iota of praise & reverence they receive! The fabric of the wines hinges upon the existence of a fictional family, with every vineyard plot being characterized by one of its members. Sometimes the cleverness of this device can call attention away from how consistently elegant, bewitching & functional these wines truly are, and either way, the Gut Oggau fam is way more than a cutesy gimmick— it’s a progressive and anti-patriarchal language for thinking about wine emotionally & intuitively, which we are obviously way here for.

Winifred is definitely the secretly and most effortlessly coolest member of the Gut Oggau fam. Theodora and her hot bro Atanasius are fancy & exhilarating & we love them for it, but Winifred is like a Cat Power/Patti Smith vibes tomboy poet who can repair a car engine with the same degree of natural ease as she can quote entire passages from Finnegan’s Wake. This vintage of Winifred rosé drinks like Winifred went home to crash with her dad Timotheus & stepmom Josephine during the pandemic, setting up shop in her childhood bedroom, which has wall-to-wall dusty rose carpeting and a hidden anarchy sign carved into a secret spot on her wooden bed frame.

This is a perfectly balanced rosé; most significantly, the Winifred vineyard is used only to make a rosé, so there is no saignée from a red wine.  Fermentation takes place in used oak barrels; the wine goes through elevage in said barrels for about 8 months, with no batonnage. Winifred is then bottled unfined, unfiltered, and with zero addition of sulfur. Half savoury, salty & deep, like swimming through warm seawater, half energetic, healthy & fresh, like crushing half a bottle of Gatorade Frost after a legendarily transcendent run. Bright cranberry, pink apple, pairs with literally anything, the ultimate wine bar glass pour.