Why it matters
The producer
Meinklang begins with a farm, not a separate vineyard compound. The Michlits family runs wine production alongside livestock and crops, allowing animals, fields and vines to occupy one agricultural system. Cattle, pigs, chickens and goats add biodiversity, while livestock provide natural fertiliser for the fields and vineyards.
The farm also produces its own seed and animal feed and grows ancient grains beside the grapevines. That combination gives the producer a specific working shape: Meinklang is both a grower and maker in Burgenland and a family-run mixed farm whose vineyard decisions sit inside wider farm practice.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
The farm lies on the eastern side of Lake Neusiedl, close to the Hungarian lowlands and within the World Heritage landscape of the Neusiedlersee National Park. Pamhagen supplies the geographic anchor on the label, while Burgenland identifies the Austrian wine region.
No village appellation or DAC is supplied for the producer here. The useful label information therefore comes from the producer name, the grape and the cuvée. Graupert’s Pinot Gris is a bottle shaped by Meinklang’s farming and cellar choices, not by an asserted vineyard hierarchy.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Meinklang farms through biodynamic preparations and a landscape of small vineyard blocks, grazing land, orchards, ponds, waterways and wildland. The vines are part of a mixed property, while livestock provide natural fertiliser for the fields and vineyards. The farm’s own seed and animal feed keep more of the agricultural cycle on site.
Graupert Grauburgunder 2022 carries those choices into the cellar through ten days of skin contact, spontaneous fermentation, unfiltered bottling and minimal sulphur. The wine was matured partly in a concrete egg and partly in stainless steel. Its lees-cloudy appearance and dense palate belong to this deliberately hands-off cellar treatment, while the split élevage gives the bottle two different vessels during maturation.
Wines to know
The range in view
Graupert Grauburgunder 2022 is the principal white wine in the available range. It is Pinot Gris, also called Grauburgunder, fermented on its skins for ten days. The style is lees-cloudy rather than clear and narrowly filtered, with aromatic breadth, density and substantial palate drive. Its character balances unruly rusticity with graceful delicacy, giving the bottle both a rough-edged feel and a softer, more lifted side.
Meinklang Pinot Noir 2023 supplies a red Pinot Noir alongside Graupert. The available details establish the grape and vintage, but do not supply a defensible account of its blend, parcel, flavours or ageing outlook, so those details should not be added. The named bottles show two different colour and grape directions, while the complete estate range remains broader than the evidence presented here.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Graupert Grauburgunder 2022. It is Meinklang’s skin-fermented Pinot Gris, made with ten days of skin contact, spontaneous fermentation and élevage split between a concrete egg and stainless steel. In the glass it is cloudy with lees, broad in aroma, dense through the middle and driven across the palate, with a meeting of rustic edges and delicate lift.