Franz himself comes from the hospitality sector where he started in the restaurant business and worked as a sommelier (working at various renown houses in Austria and also in New York) & as a wine consultant before setting up TOA and starting exporting outstanding Austrian wines in the world in 2002. Wabi-Sabi was started because he wanted to experience & learn producing authentic cold-climate, low-intervention wine for himself, from scratch so to say, all the work in the vineyard and cellar, from pruning to filling and everything in between.