Styria: Greenhouse and Vineyard
In the north, guests sleep in treehouses and breakfast among lemon trees. In the south, a winery with an inn sits on the border. Two houses, two Styrias.
Styria is divided in two, and the dividing line isn't political but culinary. In the north alpine pastures, game, pumpkin-seed oil. In the south vines, Sauvignon Blanc, wine taverns. Two hours' drive lie between, and two houses that each bring their half to the point.
Pogusch: the inn that became a farm
The Pogusch is a pass near Turnau, below the Hochschwab, and the Reitbauer family — who run the Steirereck in Vienna — took over an inn up here and turned it into a place that's hard to describe. They keep sheep, goats, pigs and chickens. They grow over five hundred edible plant varieties in greenhouses and gardens. They cook with them in the inn and at the Schankkuchl over an open fire.
And you sleep in treehouses at the forest edge, in bird houses, or in cabins standing inside the greenhouse — among lemon trees, with glass overhead. In the morning you walk through the garden to breakfast. The place is nearly energy self-sufficient, and you don't notice because nobody explains it.
The Pogusch is neither hotel nor restaurant. It's a farm where both happen.
Maitz: winery, inn, wine hotel
Ratsch an der Weinstraße lies so close to Slovenia that the border runs through the vineyards. Here Wolfgang Maitz has an estate that belongs to the STK winegrowers — the Styrian terroir and classic estates that have brought the region's Sauvignon Blanc to a level Sancerre doesn't like to talk about.
The estate includes an inn and a wine hotel: rooms overlooking the vines, a holiday house on the Schusterberg, and a kitchen that belongs to the wine rather than the other way round. You come to drink and stay because you can no longer drive — that's the purpose of a wine hotel, and Maitz fulfils it without fuss.
Practical
From Graz an hour in either direction; from Vienna two. Not both in one weekend — choose north or south. Best time: September, for the harvest in the south and the first frost on the Pogusch. The Maitz inn is closed Sundays and Mondays.
