About Austria

Austrian wine has rapidly gained in international stature in the past decade, mostly on the strength of Austria's dry white wines produced within a 20-mile radius of the small city of Krems on the Danube, less than 50 miles west of Vienna. The steep, terraced, riverside vineyards of the Wachau, immediately west of Krems, as well as geologically diverse sites on the edges of the city and to the north in the Kamptal, yield Austria’s most brilliant and distinctive wines. Differences among Austrian wines from various sites within close proximity to one another are often as dramatic as the sight of such geological formations as crumbling volcanic slopes, sandstone buttes, and huge wavelike mounds of ancient glacial dust called loess.

Burgenland, a long, narrow swath of land running the length of Austria’s border with Hungary, is home to the majority of Austria’s red wines and botrytis-influenced sweet wines. Northern Burgenland is subdivided into two viticultural regions, the Neusiedlersee and Neusiedlersee-Hügelland, both named for the long, shallow lake that runs between them. To the south two red Austrian wine regions are appropriately known as Mittelburgenland and Südburgenland.

When it comes to dry whites, a few distinctive aspects of Austrian wine labeling must be noted. The word Trocken (dry) is seldom displayed as prominently on Austrian white wine labels as it is on German, simply because it is understood. Should a wine be over the nine-grams-per-liter threshold of Halbtrocken (literally, half-dry), that is also typically buried in small print, because the wine is still unlikely to taste noticeably sweet. In certain regions around Krems, the terms Kabinett and Spätlese are still officially in use to describe a more delicate and a riper, fuller style of wine, respectively. But in practice, these terms are rarely seen on labels anymore, and if they are, they appear in fine print.

Nowadays, growers prefer to indicate differences in ripeness, richness, or body through their own winery- internal designations—for example, they may offer “regular” and “reserve” bottlings from the same grape and vineyard. The term Auslese on a label signifies a wine with noticeable sweetness. The Wachau region uses its own set of terms to differentiate degrees of ripeness and to designate styles from delicate to fullbodied dry whites: Steinfeder, Federspiel, and Smaragd. Happily, Austria’s red wines are normally labeled by variety, without any unusual terminology, although there are numerous blends labeled with proprietary names.

Zweigelt: Widely planted inside Austria and virtually unknown outside (like the white grape Grüner Veltliner), Zweigelt typically exhibits bright red fruit and spices. Often effusively juicy in its unoaked state, versions raised in barrel show darker flavors and layered complexity.

Blaufränkisch: This grape, associated with Burgenland and neighboring Hungary, typically yields wines with rich black raspberry, white pepper, and forest floor flavors. More concentrated examples are palate staining and complex.

St. Laurent: Said to be a member of the Pinot family and seldom encountered outside Austria, this grape of mysterious origins can give polished, caressing wines with rich red fruit and intriguing meaty nuances.