VULGO RITTER

And she did. In the span of barely a decade since her first vintage in 2010, Sabine and her husband Dominique bought an old farm, Vulgo Ritter, converted and renovated its 3 buildings into a home, guest apartment, winery, and tasting room, planted 1.8 hectares of new vineyards, and gave birth to three daughters along the path to crafting her award-winning wines.

“How do you do it all?” I ask – it seems hard enough to make a go of it with barely 2 hectares of vineyard, let alone transform an estate, raise a family, and win what now numbers dozens of awards for her wine. As an engineer, she tells me, she’s leveraged her prior experience to introduce time-saving innovations throughout the vineyard and winery to optimize her time, reduce labor, and maintain a high-quality focus, including the highly mechanized, temperature-controlled winery of her own design.

But with up to 45 degrees of slope, the vineyards are still mostly handwork – and Sabine offers that she’s also woven a community around her – her husband Dom, who still works as an engineer, her family, and a close-knit group of other pioneering winemakers in the region that collaborate, support one another, and advance their shared mission of restoring Kärnten to the ranks of great wine regions.