A family winery on a hill that Austria shares with Slovenia.

Weingut Tement is a family wine estate on the Zieregg, a hill above Ehrenhausen in Südsteiermark, South Styria, in the far south of Austria. Its vineyards lie on both sides of the border with Slovenia. In the history the winery published on its website, which the Internet Archive holds from 2020, the estate was founded in 1959 by Josef and Edina Tement with just two hectares on the Zieregg and Grassnitzberg sites — one hectare on each side of the house, with the family’s Buschenschank, the Styrian wine tavern, between them. The winery says Josef planted Grassnitzberg, its first vineyard in family ownership, in the 1950s.

The second generation arrived early. According to the same company history, Manfred Tement took over his parents’ business in 1976, at the age of sixteen. He had trained at the wine school in Klosterneuburg, near Vienna, and the winery says he started with about three hectares around the house. In an interview published on the estate’s site, he credits the Buschenschank with laying the ground for the business’s marketing, and Viennese and Graz chefs with first carrying the wines beyond the region.

The third generation came in the 2000s. The winery says Armin Tement, Manfred’s elder son, joined in 2005 after training and internships in Austria and abroad, and that from 2008 his father made him responsible for production. The Singapore food magazine epicure reported in June 2010 that Armin had started at the family winery in 2005. His younger brother, Stefan Tement, joined in 2010 after the Silberberg wine school, completing what the family calls its “Winzer-Trio,” the trio of winemakers. Bowler Wine, the estate’s American importer, says Armin officially took the reins in 2008 while his father kept working; today the estate presents the three men as running it together.

One famous hill, divided by a border and then into four.

The estate’s name is bound to one hill. Bowler Wine calls the Ried Zieregg, a steep slope of coralline limestone on the border with Slovenia, Tement’s most famous wine, and the estate itself lists the Zieregg first among its sites. In 1999, the winery says, it built a new multi-storey cellar on the Zieregg, set into the hillside and looking out over the vineyards of South and East Styria and, across the border, the Slovenian vineyards of Ciringa — the Slovenian name, the winery notes, for Zieregg.

That view became a second estate. The company history says the family acquired vineyards in Ciringa in 2004 and planted them with Sauvignon Blanc in 2005. Those Slovenian wines are bottled as Domaine Ciringa, which its own site calls the “little brother” of Zieregg, grown on Slovenian soil in Slovenian Styria. Its main wine is Fosilni Breg, “fossil hill,” a Sauvignon Blanc whose label, the domaine says, shows a fossilised starfish, under the line “Ein Berg wie ein Meer” — a mountain like a sea.

The Zieregg itself has since been divided. Bowler Wine reports that from the 2020 vintage the family split the large vineyard into four named sites, and the estate now lists them as Zieregg, Zieregg Kår, Zieregg Kapelle and Zieregg Steilriegel, calling Steilriegel the oldest part of its holdings. Other sites on the list include Grassnitzberg Riff, Wielitschberg, Sernau König and Hochkittenberg.

The grape at the centre is Sauvignon Blanc. Manfred Tement says in the estate’s interview that he saw early on that the variety suited the region best, and that if he started again he would concentrate on it alone. The estate also makes Morillon, the Styrian name for Chardonnay, Gelber Muskateller and Welschriesling.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all wineries: Barkan, Royal Tokaji, Oremus, Tement, Weninger, Jermann and Bründlmayer, from Israel, Hungary, Austria and Friuli. Wineries in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family estates that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single name can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A winery’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its wine is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its wine is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Organic, then biodynamic, and still a family firm.

The farming has changed under the third generation. The company history says Armin and his father converted the first ten hectares to organic farming from 2005, decided in 2015 to have all their vineyards certified — 80 hectares in Austria and 20 in Slovenia, in the figures the winery gave then — and were officially certified organic from the 2018 harvest, with the Slovenian vineyards to follow from 2019. Bowler Wine reports that 2022 was the first vintage certified biodynamic by both Demeter and the Austrian growers’ group Respekt, and the estate says it has been a Demeter member since 2022. Manfred Tement says in the estate’s interview that the switch was pushed by his sons.

The family has grown sideways too. The company history says Heidi Tement, Manfred’s wife, opened the first Winzarei chalets on the Zieregg in 2012, and more followed at Ciringa. The estate is a member of the STK group of twelve Styrian estates that the winery says grew out of the Styrian Klassik growers’ association founded in 1986. It also works on side projects with other families, among them an Alfred Wermut blend with Alois Wermut, who studied with Manfred at Klosterneuburg from 1974 to 1979, and Arachon, with the Szemes and F.X. Pichler families.

Where the wine is made is plain: in the estate’s cellar on the Zieregg, near Ehrenhausen, from its own South Styrian vineyards, with the Domaine Ciringa wines grown across the border in Slovenia. Who owns it is equally plain — the Tement family, now in its third working generation. The estate’s site is tement.at; Domaine Ciringa has its own site.

For a design guide, Tement shows how a family estate can build a whole identity on a single hill, even one cut in two by a national border. Compare Bründlmayer and Weninger, two more Austrian family wineries. For this guide we use Sauvignon green, hillside green and limestone with a clean sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Tement’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.