As autumn crept quietly across Rosswag, Olympia and Hannes celebrated a decade of Roterfaden. Over the past 10 years, the couple have built a winery and a home, nurtured vineyards and picked innumerable grapes, bottled vibrant wines, and planted a garden where their two small children grub happily for vegetables. Raising a glass at the winery’s anniversary party, it was easy to see why so many had gathered. Roterfaden translates as ‘red thread’; a German expression referring to a common thread that runs throughout a story. Despite their different backgrounds, Olympia growing up in the busy port city of Thessaloniki while Hannes was raised in rural Württemberg, they share an identical farming and winemaking philosophy. It’s an approach which can only be described as holistic, from biodynamics in the Demeter-certified vineyards to the woven harvest baskets, the open vat fermentations and the filling, corking and labelling of the wines. Apart from a de-stemmer, everything is done by hand. There is a calm industriousness to their work that reflects years of training. After meeting at Geisenheim, Olympia and Hannes worked at wineries around the world; between the two of them, they have experience in South Africa, California, Mallorca, France, Italy, and of course Germany, but it was in Austria that they began to ‘build our own winery in our minds’. Olympia was working for Preisinger in Burgenland and Hannes for Muhr-van der Niepoort in Carnuntum, when their love of Lemberger, known in Austria as Blaufränkisch, really blossomed. Since their first trial vintage in 2014, with 1000 litres made from half a hectare of vines, Hannes and Olympia have championed this regional grape variety, seeking to showcase all it has to offer. From their entry level Lemberger (a bistro-friendly dinner partner) to their Endschleife (sophisticated and with great ageing potential) they are making consistently delicious wines with enticing complexity. Their vermouth is founded on Lemberger (straight up and distilled, with herbs and citrus) and Rosafaden is yet another expression — a pink thread running alongside the red.
This is far from your average rosé. Rather than using maceration to extract colour from the grapes or the French saignée ‘bleeding’ method, Olympia and Hannes direct pressed the grapes, the juice carrying the rich Lemberger colour despite fleeting skin contact. Fermented and aged in old barrels, it is a rosé with character, substance, and a depth that works incredibly well with food, carrying the distinctive minerality of Roterfaden’s blue limestone soils.