Nikolaihof

Where Roman legionaries planted their vines

Anyone who steps through the gate of Nikolaihof steps into living history. Beneath your feet lie the foundations of Favianis, a Roman fort from 63 BC. The Celts revered the place as sacred long before that. In the inner courtyard the medieval Agapitus Chapel still stands, while the vineyard “Im Weingebirge” is considered the first vineyard in Europe to be mentioned in documents, recorded since AD 470. Not a marketing story, but historical fact.

Demeter pioneers out of necessity

The Saahs family took over Nikolaihof in 1894 but lost large parts of the property during the Second World War. When grandfather Saahs bought the estate back in 1960, he died the same year. His son faced a fresh start in 1962 without capital, and of necessity farmed with “old methods”. What began as a shortage became a conviction: when Christine Saahs married into the family in 1971, she brought her experience of Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic principles with her. Nikolaihof became Austria's first Demeter-certified wine estate and remains to this day the only certified biodynamic producer in the Wachau. When Fred Loimer co-founded the respekt-BIODYN association in the neighbouring Kamptal in 2006, Nikolaihof had long been a model for a new generation of Austrian winemakers.

20 years of patience in the Roman cellar

In the Roman vaulted cellar works a 350-year-old tree press, a monument of oak beams that yields wines of phenomenal inner structure. The musts ferment spontaneously in large Slavonian oak casks, some of which rest here for a decade or longer. The legendary Vinothek line embodies this philosophy: the 1995 Riesling Vinothek matured for almost 20 years before becoming, in 2014, the first Austrian wine to receive 100 Parker points. Christine Saahs's reaction? She offered the rare wine only by the glass in her own restaurant, under an old linden tree in the courtyard.

Elegance rather than concentration

While many Wachau growers aim for power and extract, Nikolaus Saahs jr. has chosen a different path. His wines, such as the mineral Im Weingebirge Grüner Veltliner or the complex Steiner Hund Riesling, show moderate alcohol levels and remarkable longevity. The 22 hectares function as a living organism: wild herbs grow between the vines, bees hum, emerald lizards bask on the stone terraces. You can taste this biodiversity in wines of crystalline clarity and filigree structure.