Franz Josef Gritsch

Franz Josef Gritsch

This eight hectare estate has vines in some of the finest sites in the Wachau, Austria’s most prestigious region for white wines. I suspect that under Franz Josef Gritsch, with his wife Maria and his parents and sisters, the quality has never been higher in the 800 years of wine production here at the Mauritiushof. The house and cellar date from the 13th century and have been in the Gritsch family since 1799. The wines seem to get better with every vintage that passes, showing a purity of expression that we expect from these old rocky Danube gorge soils, where gneiss, quartz, sand and loam provide potential for raciness and complexity through the medium of Riesling and Grüner Veltliner, delicious in their youth and arguably even finer with many years of bottle age.