The warm light of the late summer afternoon falls through the floor-to-ceiling living room windows and into the kitchen. Katharina Lackner-Tinnacher is standing next to a massive fridge, holding a bottle of wine against the sun. She opens it with a trained hand, talks about electronic music, then about classical music and offers different drinks and snacks. All at the same time. Doing things at the same time, grasping and analyzing them quicker, working hard and making it seem like no big deal is sort of the unofficial mantra of this young vintner.
But maybe it is this confusing, elfish ease of Katharina Lackner-Tinnacher, who roams the vineyards of her winery in Gamlitz, that is her most impressive feature. Is it the light-heartedness that allows for her to escape the burden of 240 years of family history and tradition – at least for some time? Maybe. The carefreeness in her personality is an unexpected result of her upbringing, she says: “Until I was 18, I never asked myself what I would do with my life”. A luxury, as she puts it, that she could never really treasure until now.
Nevertheless, the connection with wine runs in her blood. “When you grow up in a winery”, she says laughingly, “sooner or later you will be dragged in.”
Her lively personality, gestures and movements contrast with her deliberate, calm and focused way of speaking. Whereas her male colleagues may act very down-to-earth and make their wines based on intuition and instincts, Lackner-Tinnacher follows a different path – careful, but confident: “Good vintners need little talent, but a lot of knowledge”. This distinction and the pleasure of shaking things up in order not to be defined by them, has become the incitement of her work.
The view from the outside, the exchange with friends, the interest in other fields and cultures is what keeps her awake and also benefits her wines in the long run: “As an established business, we need to prove that we’re not standing still or resting on our laurels. But at the same time, we need to be attentive towards our tradition and cultivate it”, states Lackner-Tinnacher, describing her own professional area of conflict. Isn’t that intimidating? “No”, she answers firmly, a grin flashing over her face.
Of course, Katharina Lackner-Tinnacher is the only woman in the STK community. A fact she ignores with the greatest of ease. “My parents just had two daughters”, she says and shrugs her shoulder, referring to herself and her sister who is an architect. Art and culture have become more than a balance and passion for the vintner: “It’s important to have a life beside the wine”, she warns and again strays from the path of all the others whose lives entirely revolve around wine.
The depth Katharina Lackner-Tinnacher seeks in the arts can certainly be found in her wines. Elegant as her passion for design are the white wines of the small, but traditional organic winery. The youthful freshness mixes in with the slow, multifaceted aromas and makes the line of the young vintner stand out. She laughs, honestly, when it comes to the secret of her wines. Then she reaches out, talks about special soils, the legacy of 240 years of tradition and then concludes in a lighthearted way: “I believe that pleasant vintners make pleasant wines”.
More information: www.stk-wein.at