Why it matters
The producer
Weingut Heinrich works from Baumgarten 60 in Gols, on Burgenland’s side of Lake Neusiedl. Its bottles move between red wine and skin-contact wine, but Gabarinza provides a useful centre: a blend of Zweigelt, Blaufränkisch and Merlot named for an old Gols hillside. The link between a named slope, three red grapes and one label keeps the range rooted in a specific part of the village.
The estate’s farming changed before its recent orange wines became visible in the range. Heinrich says it has cultivated biodynamically since the early 2000s, then made animals a permanent part of the farm in 2014 to help close that cycle. The decision joins vine rows, animals and composting into the same farm system, while the cellar continues to release wines as different in form as a named red blend, Pinot Noir and skin-contact whites.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Gols lies northeast of Lake Neusiedl, and Heinrich’s vineyards give that location more than one expression. Gabarinza comes from an old Gols hillside, while another estate area carries Blaufränkisch, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay. The result is not a single-grape cellar: red varieties and pale-skinned varieties appear in separate wines, with site and winemaking determining whether the bottle is red, white or orange.
Gabarinza grows across Ice Age terrace gravel and, higher on the slope, fine sandy-calcareous lake sediments with substantial clay. Those materials make the hillside a varied growing ground rather than a uniform block, and the wine carries the Gabarinza name rather than appearing as an unnamed red blend.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Biodynamic cultivation is the vineyard framework, and the animals introduced permanently in 2014 are part of its practical cycle. In the cellar, the range divides by method as well as grape: Naked Orange is skin-fermented and raised in large wooden vessels, while Graue Freyheit 2021 also uses skin contact. Skin contact leaves the juice with grape skins during fermentation, giving these wines a different route to texture and grip from a conventionally pressed white wine.
Pinot Noir 2024 follows another path, with fine-lees ageing rather than skin-contact framing. Lees are the spent yeast cells left after fermentation; keeping wine on them can build texture through ageing. That makes Pinot Noir a red-wine branch of the range, separate from the aromatic, skin-fermented bottles.
Wines to know
The range in view
Gabarinza is the historic named-site red: Zweigelt, Blaufränkisch and Merlot assembled from the old Gols hillside. Its role is structural as much as historical, putting a three-grape red blend against the varied ground of terrace gravel and sandy-calcareous sediments with clay.
Naked Orange and Graue Freyheit take the range toward skin-contact wine. Naked Orange is highly aromatic and lighter in body, with acidity that supports its freshness; its time in large wooden vessels follows the skin fermentation. Graue Freyheit 2021 is also skin-fermented, but its documented profile is more structured, making it the firmer, more textural side of this branch.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Naked Orange. It is a skin-fermented orange wine raised in large wooden vessels, highly aromatic and lighter in body, with acidity that keeps the palate fresh. Its blend is described differently by the available sources, so the bottle is better understood through its method than through a fixed grape formula: grape skins remain part of fermentation, then the wine develops in wood. It shows Heinrich’s move beyond red grapes without losing contact with vineyard work and cellar process.