OI
DA!
He’s not the brightest buoy on the lake. That’s what many thought when Fabian anchored a buoy filled with wine in Lake Neusiedl in 2017. Daring to venture into unchartered waters, he dove in looking for insights like those of the legendary Louis Gaspard D’Estournel (*1753). The enterprising wine freak recognized that constant motion (like in the hull of a ship) is extremely good for the wine. Dancing on the waves to perfection! Fabian’s attempt has now matured into his highly awarded, signature wine. The vintage is limited to a single buoy and is only anchored in the lake when the water is deep enough to make a splash.
That is why the latest vintage is from 2020 and only a few bottles are still available.
We are winegrowers.
And we enjoy it.
Visit the SHOP to grab a bottle of Wellentänzer while you still can!
THANKS, LOUIS!
Louis-Gaspard d`Estournel (*1753; †1844) was a bachelor from an old winegrowing family in Saint-Estèphe. He is not only the founder of the world-famous Bordeaux winery Château Cos d’Estournel, but also the first to understand how much wine benefits when it is allowed to rock.
What Fabian Sloboda has further developed with his artist friend Nikolaus Eberstaller is a much less complicated route to the goal: buoy instead of a three-master. Louis-Gaspard d’Estournel traded by ship to Africa, Arabia and as far as India. He sold his wines to very illustrious people: the moguls, the kings and princes in India as well as the sultans of the coastal regions. After a time however, the market and demand for wine collapsed and business was poor. This meant he had to bring back all the wine barrels that had already been shipped. When he compared its quality with the batches left at home, his bad mood disappeared faster than expected: the well-traveled wine tasted great. Even more, it tasted better than the wine stored in his cellar. Louis soon realized that the constant rocking in the ship’s hold was good for the wine stored in wooden barrels. He used this insight to pull off a marketing coup: he stamped the returned wines with an “R” for “retour des Indes” – back from India. The wine sold like hot cakes. As a result, he decided that from now on all his wines would have to travel by ship before they could be sold. Environmentally speaking, it was completely harmless, because back then all the ships still sailed with wind.
If you want to experience something new, you have to dare to take the plunge. The Wellentänzer (Wave Dancer) was worth diving in …
In 2018, when enthusiastic wine lovers were already embracing Fabian Sloboda’s project, he began
collaborating with the young winery Irsslinger on a sister project on Lake Zurich in Switzerland.
