Slovenia · Štajerska Slovenija

Vino Gross

Low-intervention whites from Slovenian Styria: two appellations, Opok marl soils, and a cellar where timing is the only tool.

The producer

Michael and Maria Gross farm 18 hectares of white wine vineyards in Štajerska Slovenija, split between two appellations: Haloze in the south and Maribor to the north. The Haloze parcels sit on Opok, a layered marl with 24 to 35 percent limestone content that keeps natural acidity high in the fruit and contributes a mineral grip to the wines. Nothing is filtered. No additions or corrections enter the cellar. Across roughly 70 percent of the range, no sulfites are added at all.

What makes Vino Gross different from the wider low-intervention category is the discipline behind the absence: Michael Gross treats every racking decision as the primary winemaking act, controlling timing rather than chemistry. White grapes receive a maximum two-hour maceration before settling, then sit on gross lees for a full year before racking, followed by six to twelve more months on fine lees. The wines land clean and fruit-precise, with a lees-derived softness on the mid-palate and an acid line from the limestone soil that carries them through the finish.

Known for

Fruit-precise, lees-textured white wines from Haloze and Maribor, built without filtration or cellar additions.

Notable facts

The story

Not a dogma

The Vino Gross website is direct about sulfites: "We don't add sulphur." When Wine Anorak visited in 2025 and Michael Gross was asked about the practice, the answer was more considered. "It is not a dogma," he said. "I put a lot of attention into deciding to work with or without sulfites." What the website presents as a categorical position is, in practice, a vintage-by-vintage judgment: roughly 70 percent of the wines at Vino Gross are made without any added sulfites, while the remaining 30 percent receive a selective, minimal addition when Gross decides the wine calls for it. The gap between the public statement and the working method is not a contradiction so much as a compression: the estate's instinct runs toward zero, but the actual decision belongs to Gross alone, wine by wine, year by year, with no protocol to fall back on.

Not a dogma

The Vino Gross website is direct about sulfites: "We don't add sulphur." When Wine Anorak visited in 2025 and Michael Gross was asked about the practice, the answer was more considered. "It is not a dogma," he said. "I put a lot of attention into deciding to work with or without sulfites." What the website presents as a categorical position is, in practice, a vintage-by-vintage judgment: roughly 70 percent of the wines at Vino Gross are made without any added sulfites, while the remaining 30 percent receive a selective, minimal addition when Gross decides the wine calls for it. The gap between the public statement and the working method is not a contradiction so much as a compression: the estate's instinct runs toward zero, but the actual decision belongs to Gross alone, wine by wine, year by year, with no protocol to fall back on.

From the atlas

Vino Gross

At A Glance

The Producer

Michael and Maria Gross farm 18 hectares of white wine vineyards in Štajerska Slovenija, split between two named appellations: Haloze in the south and Maribor to the north. Nothing is filtered. No additions or corrections enter the cellar. Across roughly 70 percent of the range, no sulfites are added at all. What makes Vino Gross legible is not the absence of intervention so much as the discipline behind it: Michael Gross makes every racking decision himself, treating the timing of that single action as the primary winemaking lever when chemistry has been taken off the table.

The wines do not taste like the zero-zero category tends to promise. They are clean, precise, and fruit-forward, with acidity that lifts rather than dominates and lees texture that adds weight without clouding the glass.

Place

Štajerska Slovenija is Slovenia's eastern wine country, the Slovenian half of a continuous viticultural landscape that crosses the border into Austrian Styria. The Podravje wine region covers this territory, and within it Haloze and Maribor are the two appellations where Vino Gross works.

Haloze is the more distinctive address. The hills are steep and terraced, and the soil is Opok, a local marl with 24 to 35 percent limestone content. That limestone fraction is responsible for the acid grip in Vino Gross wines: the chalk-influenced marl drains well, keeps vine stress moderate, and holds enough mineral character in the fruit to give the wines a firm backbone without requiring any cellar correction. Maribor, further north, adds a cooler, slightly more Alpine character to parcels there.

The proximity to Austrian Styria matters for grape choices. Welschriesling and Pinot Blanc are shared varieties across the border, and the Haloze wines carry a freshness that owes as much to elevation and latitude as to the cellar approach.

Soil And Site

The Haloze parcels sit on Opok, the local name for a layered marl formation with between 24 and 35 percent limestone. Opok provides good drainage on the steeper terraced slopes, prevents the vines from over-cropping, and contributes the mineral bite that runs through Vino Gross whites. The limestone content keeps natural acidity high in the fruit, which matters in a cellar that uses no acidification. What arrives from the vineyard is what goes into the bottle.

Story

Vino Gross occupies an unusual position in the low-intervention wine world: a producer with genuinely minimal cellar inputs whose wines consistently read as clean rather than uncertain. Michael Gross makes the racking decisions, and sulfite additions are made selectively.

Michael Gross works by hand in the vineyard wherever possible. In the cellar, the sequence is fixed and patient: white grapes receive a maximum two-hour maceration before settling, then the wine stays on gross lees for a full year before racking. After racking, the wine continues on fine lees for six to twelve more months before bottling. No fining agent, no filter, no corrective addition at any stage.

That extended lees contact is what puts texture into wines that might otherwise read as purely fresh and light. It also means that timing controls everything. Gross has said that the racking is always his decision, because in a low-intervention cellar it has more influence on the wine than almost anything else. Moving a wine off its gross lees a month early or late changes the fruit weight, the aromatic direction, and how the wine carries itself in the bottle.

The philosophy extends to sulfites, where the public position and the private practice are more nuanced than the estate's own website suggests. Around 70 percent of the range carries no added sulfites at all. The remaining wines receive a selective addition based on Gross's judgment for that wine in that vintage. He has described it plainly: it is not a dogma, it is a decision.

Vineyards And Cellar

Everything that can be done by hand is done by hand. The Haloze terraces are steep enough that mechanical work is limited in any case, and hand harvesting on Opok marl slopes produces the kind of careful fruit selection that matters when no correction is coming in the cellar.

For whites, maceration runs for a maximum of two hours before the juice settles. That brief contact extracts some texture and aromatic depth without moving the wine toward orange-wine territory. The wine then goes directly onto gross lees, where it stays for twelve months. Racking follows, and the wine sits on fine lees for another six to twelve months. Gross controls the racking timing personally, reading each wine rather than following a fixed calendar.

Filtration is not used. Sulfites are either absent or added in minute amounts, decided wine by wine. No fining agents, no acidification, no enological additives. The bottles carry what the fruit and the lees produced.

Wines

The range centers on white wines from Haloze and Maribor, built from Pinot Blanc, Welschriesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Furmint (known locally as Šipon).

Hisno Blanc is the blended entry wine, formulated differently each vintage. The 2022 combined 40 percent Pinot Blanc, 30 percent Welschriesling, 20 percent Sauvignon Blanc, and 10 percent Furmint, aged ten months on lees. The 2022 wine is green-fruited and zippy, with a slight mint note and lively acidity. The technique can shift vintage by vintage, with skin contact or semi-carbonic maceration entering the blend in some years. The wine is designed to be variable by intention rather than inconsistent by accident.

Gorca sits at a different register: crystalline fruit, no wild or funky edge, the kind of purity that comes from correct lees management rather than additive winemaking. Where Hisno Blanc plays with blend composition, Gorca focuses on clarity of fruit from a single address.

Vintage variation is real and acknowledged. The 2023 shows balanced wines with very fresh and precise acidity. The 2022 is fruit-forward, juicy, and marked by good acidity. Both demonstrate that the extended lees approach produces wines capable of holding complexity across different growing seasons.

In The Glass

Vino Gross whites open with clean green fruit: apple, pear, and a faint mineral note from the Opok marl. The Welschriesling in the blends adds a herbal edge, sometimes registering as fresh cut grass or a cooler mint character. Sauvignon Blanc contributes definition without dominating.

In the mouth, the lees contact becomes apparent as a slight roundness on the mid-palate, a creaminess that would be absent in a fresher, less patient winemaking approach. The acidity is high and consistent across the range: it lifts the fruit, keeps the wine from feeling heavy, and gives the wines length on the finish without hardness. The Furmint fraction, even at 10 percent in a blend, adds a waxy, slightly textured note.

The finish is clean and dry. No residual sweetness, no oak influence, no secondary fermentation character in the whites. What remains is fruit, acidity, and a mineral trace from the limestone-bearing soil.

A Bottle To Understand It

Hisno Blanc is the right first bottle from Vino Gross. The blend, typically combining Pinot Blanc, Welschriesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Furmint, is aged on lees for ten months and bottled without filtration or corrective addition. It is fresh and green-fruited, with a light mint lift, brisk acidity, and a lees-derived softness that keeps it from reading as austere. It shows what the cellar approach produces without requiring prior knowledge of the Haloze appellation or Slovenian Styria's grape varieties. The varietal blend also demonstrates how these four grapes behave together: each one contributes something the others do not, and the wine is more legible for it.

Anecdote

The Vino Gross website is direct about sulfites: "We don't add sulphur." When Wine Anorak visited in 2025 and Michael Gross was asked about the practice, the answer was more considered. "It is not a dogma," he said. "I put a lot of attention into deciding to work with or without sulfites." What the website presents as a categorical position is, in practice, a vintage-by-vintage judgment: roughly 70 percent of the wines at Vino Gross are made without any added sulfites, while the remaining 30 percent receive a selective, minimal addition when Gross decides the wine calls for it. The gap between the public statement and the working method is not a contradiction so much as a compression: the estate's instinct runs toward zero, but the actual decision belongs to Gross alone, wine by wine, year by year, with no protocol to fall back on.

Final Word

Vino Gross makes white wines from two Slovenian Styrian appellations that consistently do what low-intervention winemaking promises but rarely delivers: clean fruit, real acidity from marl soils, and enough lees texture to give the wines body and direction in the bottle. Michael Gross's cellar method is patient and deliberate, controlled at the points where timing matters most. Hisno Blanc is the place to start.

Sources

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