Markus Altenburger is stoking a building fascination with Leithaberg wines. His vineyards perch at Austria’s far eastern edge, where vast, shallow Lake Neusiedl and the low Leitha mountain range wrangle for influence. His wines express the distinctive climate, limestone and slate soils, and the handful of native and traditional Austrian varieties he has chosen to work with. In the few years since Markus took over his family’s estate, he’s moved from what he calls “well behaved wines” to wines that are much closer to nature and bear a far more personal stamp. Working from 30 small plots (all now in the third year of organic conversion) scattered around the historic wine village of Jois, he is focused on blaufränkisch and a narrow range of now-rare native white varieties and old-vine chardonnay. In addition, he and his wife Bernadette makes a few styles of distinctly Austrian rosé. He thrives on tapping into what he calls “the ying and the yang of Jois” — 800 years of winegrowing counterposed with thoughtful, innovative winemaking.