Charly Rol

A Burgundian hand in Langenlois

The decision to put Burgundy’s habits to Austrian fruit sits at the center of Charly Rol, winemaker at Charly Rol in Langenlois. Rol is a Burgundy-born maker working in Lower Austria, in a cellar at Presselgraben 14, where the label and the person share the same name. That closeness matters. It keeps the work legible: one hand, one cellar, one sequence of choices from fruit to bottle.

Rol established the winery in 2016, bringing a Burgundian frame to the Kremstal and Kamptal landscape rather than treating Austria as a blank page. The region around Langenlois is strongly identified with Grüner Veltliner and Riesling; his portfolio also reaches toward Pinot Noir and Syrah, varieties that make his origin visible without turning the cellar into a copy of somewhere else. The lineage that can be stated plainly is geographic and practical, Burgundy-born winemaking applied in Austria. What remains is the station itself: Rol as winemaker, present in the vineyard and cellar decisions that give the wines their shape.

Twelve days in open tank

The cellar work is described through Burgundian technique, not through volume. Whole-bunch fermentation appears in the method, with open-tank work over 12 days, a choice that puts stems, fruit, cap management, and timing into close contact. Open tanks keep the fermentation visible and physical. They ask for decisions at the bench-side of the cellar rather than distance.

Aging is given with equal specificity: an 18-month period and a 50/50 split across oak types, including French oak. Those figures are useful because they keep the conversation on the tools. Oak here is not a decorative note; it is part of the method, a way of setting structure around fruit that comes from Austrian ground and a Burgundian habit of reading texture. The named wines carry that range in the bottle. Le Hardi Saint Laurent 2022 and Le Sans Peur 2021 fix two reds to particular vintages. Côtes Danubiennes, Le Téméraire Grüner Veltliner, and Charly Rol Rosé widen the register without losing the signature of the maker’s name.

The cellar at Presselgraben 14

The place is a small winery and wine cellar in Langenlois, set within the Kremstal, with private tastings rather than a public room built for volume. The atmosphere that can be described with confidence is quiet, intimate, and cellar-led. This is not a house whose character rests on spectacle. The work happens where wine usually becomes itself: among tanks, barrels, fruit decisions, and the patience of élevage.

That scale suits the portfolio. Still whites and still reds can sit beside one another without needing a broad program to justify them. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling keep the address tied to Lower Austria; Pinot Noir and Syrah keep Burgundy and the Rhône within reach of Rol’s hand. The useful close is in the bottles already named, especially Le Téméraire Grüner Veltliner.