The Culture of Wine: Austria
Austria is a wealthy, landlocked country dominated by the Alps: it’s only possible to grow grapes on the eastern borders of the country. The language is German, and there are obvious cultural connections with Bavaria in Germany across the northern border. The pretty town of Salzburg, where Mozart was from, has a Germanic, Alpine feel to it (think The Sound of Music).
Austria is where Hitler was born, and there has been a continuing history of far-right politics. It’s a country that pulls between its Germanic culture, neighbouring both Germany and Switzerland, and the more Slavic culture to the south. Located in the centre of Europe, it’s a more complicated country than its size suggests.
There are also plenty of cultural connections with the other countries it borders. Until the end of the First World War, Austria wasn’t a country as such but the centre of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, which stretched all the way to modern-day Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Croatia. Many of the wine regions are near Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia, and there are many shared grape varieties such as Blaufränkisch, Grüner Veltliner, and Welshriesling. Southern Alpine Austria borders Alto Adige in Italy, also called Südtirol, as Austrian as it is Italian; Steiermark borders Slovenia, where it’s called Štajerska—some winemakers have vineyards in both regions.
The Danube river flows through many countries, starting in Germany’s Black Forest and ending in Ukraine’s Black Sea. The Danube is the English name, but none of the countries it’s found in call it that: it’s Donau in German, Dunaj in Slovakian, Dona in Hungarian. Four capital cities are connected by the river: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. Vienna is just 85km from Bratislava which is right next to the border in Slovakia. Austria is the meeting point of Western and Central Europe: during the Cold War, Austria was positioned comfortably next to Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, less comfortably next to Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
Austria’s great wine regions are either next to water or to mountains. Wachau looks down on the Danube on terraced slopes across from its twin region Kamptal; nearby is Kremstal, by the small river Krems. Burgenland surrounds the strange Neusiedlersee, a large shallow lake near the Hungarian border. It’s just one metre deep: the reeds on the lake’s edges are taller than the lake itself. To the south is Steiermark, which in English is called Styria, the Alps rising high above it. The Alpine taverns are everything you’d hope them to be, the beer tasty, the local wine delicious.
For a long time, it wasn’t that easy to find Austrian wine. The country is affluent and much of the wine was consumed locally. Vienna (or Wien) is known for its heuriger, taverns which sell wines from the recent vintage to locals—though now more to tourists. This is part of a European tradition of allowing the farmworkers to enjoy the newly-made wine. In Vienna, it’s more formalised and commercialised. Grüner Veltliner is sold in mason jars; there’s a tavern where Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II drank a glass (not together).
Café culture is central to the identity of Vienna, intellectuals meeting in a vibrant, social atmosphere. In the 1930s, Austrian football was transformed by this culture, thinkers discussing how football should be played, not so much a sporting conversation but a philosophical discussion of style, national character, and society. These conversations created one of the best teams in Europe which influenced coaches across the continent. The Anschluss, which annexed Austria to Germany, occurred in March 1938, a few months before the World Cup in which Austria were not allowed to play. Austrian football has never been the same since, but there are still historic cafés to eat some delicious cake in.
The Austrian wine industry was hit by scandal in the 1980s when producers were found to have illegally adulterated wines to make them taste sweeter. Austrian winemakers are tired of talking about the scandal as it was forty years ago, but it affected the reputation of the industry at the time and it forced an improvement in standards which led to the consistent high quality of contemporary Austrian wine. There’s now a clear identity to the wines, with the top of the bottle, often screwcap, decorated with the Austrian flag, instantly recognisable.
And if the wine’s in a one-litre bottle, what’s not to love about Austrian wine?