New from Slovenia: Vino Gross

Dear,

in 2004, Alois Gross, a fourth-generation winegrower in southern Styria, received a handwritten letter from Vienna. An elderly lady had recovered her family's estate on the Gorca, a vineyard hill in the Haloze in the far east of Slovenia. She was not looking for the highest bidder. She was looking for hands that would make wine there once more.

A year later, the estate belonged to the Gross family. Today Michael Gross and his wife Maria run it as their own winery; when his father divided the holdings in 2016, his brother took over the Austrian side, while the two of them kept the Slovenian. The border is younger than the vineyards: before the First World War, Styria was planted with a good 34,000 hectares of vines, more than 30,000 of them on the side that is today called Štajerska.

Maribor · Haloze · Gorca · Colles · Korže · Iglič

An hour's drive between home and cellar

Michael and Maria Gross live in the Slovenian village of Svečina near Maribor, right on the border; the cellar lies an hour's drive further to the south-east in the Haloze. Their entry-level wine comes from the steep slopes around Maribor, and it tells you straight away how things are done here: the Maribor Blanc 2020 spent twelve months on the full lees in a large, used wooden barrel and then remained in the cellar. It was only bottled in June 2026, four years after the vintage's regular bottling date. Hence the addition “Mise Tardive”, late bottling. 2,533 bottles.

Haloze, what remains

The Haloze is a forty-kilometre ridge of hills along the Croatian border, and it is what remains of a once-great wine landscape. In 1935, more than 1,500 hectares of vines grew here; today there are 669. When Styria was divided in 1919, the hills lost their market. The merchants from Graz stopped coming; those who could, left, and the slopes that no one pruned any longer were reclaimed by the forest.

What remains are terraces for a single row of vines each, set over marl from a vanished sea, “Opok” in the local dialect, and gradients that would serve as ski slopes elsewhere: an average of forty per cent, with a fifth of the sites exceeding sixty. A hectare holds some 2,000 vines rather than four to six thousand; each carries around 0.9 kg of grapes, harvested by hand. The Haloze Blanc brings together Furmint, Sauvignon Blanc and Welschriesling from precisely these terraces.

Gorca, the only cru

The Gorca is the hill from the letter and the only site in the Haloze recognised as a cru under Slovenian wine law, covering around a hundred hectares. When the two want to show what the estate is capable of, they open up the Gorca: pure Furmint. Here the variety is called Šipon, and it was already present in the old field blends of Styria; it ripens late and retains its acidity, which is why the wines keep. The hill is, incidentally, larger than the name might suggest: the three wines that follow also grow on parcels within the Gorca.

“Controlled idleness” is how Michael Gross describes what he does in the cellar: a maximum of two hours on the skins, spontaneous fermentation in a large used wooden barrel, twelve months on the full lees without stirring, then steel, unfined and unfiltered into the bottle.

Colles, the old name

The German name for the area was once “Kollos”, derived from the Latin colles, the word for wine hills. This name lives on in the estate's Sauvignon Blanc. It grows on a parcel where the vines only exist because half-metre-deep holes were drilled into bare rock and filled with humus. The vines are young, but the plant material is not: a Slovenian massal selection from 120-year-old vines, with one and a half grams more acidity than modern clones. 1,250 bottles.

Korže, the steepest parcel

Korže, with gradients of up to 65 per cent, is the steepest site on the estate. Here too the vines are rooted in drilled rock, and in winter goats graze between the terraces, keeping the embankments clear.

Of his landscape, Michael Gross says: “Here you cannot make cheap wine. We see that as an advantage.”

Iglič, the high plateau

At the very top of the Falstaff ranking of Slovenian Furmints sit exclusively wines from this estate; the Iglič 2023 scores 97 points. The parcel is a high plateau above the Gorca. Part of it was replanted by the estate with Furmint, while the old Müller-Thurgau vines from the era of bulk wine production were grafted over by hand, using selections that trace back to István Szepsy in Tokaj. What was once a high-yielding vineyard has become the estate's most highly rated site. 1,150 bottles.

Above this, there is only a single barrel in the cellar: Sveto, “the Sacred”: for the two of them the finest Furmint barrel of the vintage, bottled only in years when everything aligns, without any addition, and each time with a different label. The 2021 ran to around 800 bottles; the 2022 is priced at approx. €95.

The six whites together

Two village wines, then the single sites, and finally the high plateau: what became of the letter of 2004. All six farmed biodynamically, the five from the Haloze bottled without added sulphur.

	Maribor Blanc Mise Tardive 2020 Maribor · 12.5% · approx. €20 Four years longer in the cellar, bottled in June 2026.
	Haloze Blanc 2023 Haloze · 13.0% · approx. €17 The whole landscape in a single bottle, pure terraced vineyards.
	Gorca Haloze 2023 Haloze · 12.5% · approx. €24 The hill from the letter, the only legally recognised cru of the Haloze.
	Colles Haloze 2023 Haloze · 13.5% · approx. €27.50 Young vines, selection from 120-year-old stock.
	Korže Haloze 2023 Haloze · 13.5% · approx. €39 The steepest parcel, vines rooted in drilled rock.
	Iglič Haloze 2023 Haloze · 13.5% · approx. €55 Furmint from the high plateau, 97 Falstaff points.

Add directly to your basket:

How it works: one click adds all six bottles to your basket at once. From there you can swap, remove or combine individual wines. It is a suggestion, not a fixed set.

Prefer to dip your toe in first? There is also a small tasting selection from the estate: four bottles, including the Iglič, approx. €95.50.

We stock eight wines from the estate, from the house wine to the Sveto, along with the Maribor Blanc in magnum and double magnum.

Warm regards from Berlin,

Lisa and the team at
Living Wines

P.S.: For their house wine, Michael and Maria Gross buy grapes from organic neighbours, deliberately paying well, so that working the terraces remains worthwhile for the farms nearby too. The Hišno Vino Noir 2025: Blaufränkisch, co-fermented with Welschriesling, 11.5 per cent, best served lightly chilled. Approx. €13.