Earlier writers of books on Austrian wine have had to urge their readers to accept their premise that Austria can make great wines. That is no longer necessary. Austrian wines have for many years been accepted by writers, sommeliers, and even consumers, as world class. The white and nobly sweet wines have attracted the most attention, and rightly so, but there has been great progress in red-wine production and quality over the past decade.A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRIAN WINEIt took a while for Austrian wines to make their mark. This is largely because until relatively recently they were mostly sold within the country, with some exports to Germany. Yet its history as a wine-producing nation is ancient. It is known that vines were cultivated in eastern Austria in Celtic times, and there were extensive plantings by the Romans, especially in the Danube valley and Styria.
''Styria'' is the English name for the area known in German as Steiermark and this name is used extensively in the text that follows, just as Wien is often referred to as Vienna. In AD 92, Emperor Domitian ordered existing vineyards to be pulled out for fear of over-production across the empire; to what extent this decree was observed in remote Austria is not known. At any rate, two centuries later Emperor Aurelius Probus reversed the decree. After the Romans left in the late fifth century many vineyards were abandoned, and Hungarian invasions in the tenth century made matters worse, especially in Pannonia, the region now straddled by the border between Austria and Hungary. Styria too had many masters before the Habsburgs established their hold over the region in 1282. Charlemagne proved a stabilising influence after he captured what is now Austria in 803 and rules were drawn up for viticulture and wine making. The next major influence was the arrival of mainly Cistercian monks, who came to found monasteries from the eleventh century onwards, notably Stift Heiligenkreuz near Vienna and its outposts. This gave a boost to local viticulture.
Wine was needed for sacramental purposes as well as providing a beverage that was safe to drink at a time when that was rarely true of water. Many of the sites planted by monks, most of whom had come from the wine regions of France, Burgundy in particular, are still in production and still under monastic ownership. In the late twelfth century the Viennese were permitted to plant vineyards, which still exist, within the city limits. As the vineyards developed, so did trade, and many wines were exported to northern Europe.By the sixteenth century, it''s estimated, the area under vine throughout Austria was around 150,000 hectares, thrice its present area. At around the same time the sweet wines from Rust benefitted from royal approval. Rust, however, was not the first village within the Burgenland to produce sweet wine of exceptional quality. Donnerskirchen produced a Trockenbeerenauslese-style wine in 1526, and the cask, judiciously tapped over the years, was only exhausted in 1852.
The Thirty Years'' War had little effect on life in eastern Austria, but on the other hand the area was all but destroyed by invading Turkish armies in the seventeenth century. These vineyard losses as well as the abandonment of sites as a consequence of falling prices meant that the area under vine would continue to diminish.In the nineteenth century, according to Philipp Blom''s book The Wines of Austria, the varieties grown in Austria were rather different to those cultivated today. Pinot Gris (Grauburgunder) had been present since medieval times, and St Laurent, Blaufränkisch, and Pinot Noir were also planted here and there. Grüner Veltliner was certainly cultivated but far from ubiquitously, and various forms of Muskateller as well as Welschriesling would also have been grown.In 1860 the country''s first wine college and viticultural research centre was established at Klosterneuburg on the outskirts of Vienna and would have a significant influence over the century that followed. But not instantly. Henry Vizetelly, a British visitor to the Universal Exhibition held in Vienna in 1873, was unimpressed by the wines he tasted there, finding the good vastly outnumbered by the bad.
It didn''t matter all that much, as by this time phylloxera had already been discovered in Austrian vineyards and would prove the same lethal scourge as elsewhere in Europe, with losses of around 25 per cent of all vines. Gradually the vineyards were able to recover, and by 1914 there were almost 50,000 hectares under vine. However, the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy after the First World War led to the loss within the revised borders of 18,000 hectares. Viticultural research continued. In 1922 the head of the Klosterneuburg college, Friedrich (Fritz) Zweigelt created a crossing of St Laurent and Blaufränkisch that bears his name, and went on to create Goldburger and other new varieties. Zweigelt remains the country''s most widely planted red variety, but Zweigelt''s contributions to Austrian viticulture were tarnished by his membership of the Nazi Party, which enabled him to remain at the head of the college until 1945. The college''s advice was not always sensible. Long after the French had realised that it was essential for red wines to go through malolactic fermentation, the Klosterneuburg staff advised against it, a recommendation that set back the progress of Austrian red-wine production for many years.
Grüner Veltliner only began to dominate Austrian viticulture after Lenz Moser, the first of many producers of that clan bearing this name, developed a method of high training that was particularly well suited to the variety in the 1950s; it was easy to mechanise, and gave high yields. But the elevated canopy also reduced ripeness levels, and although the system was capable of producing wines of decent quality, it is clear that other systems that are planted to a higher density such as Guyot or cordon give better results. Moser''s Hochkultur is rarely glimpsed today.POPULARITY, SCANDAL, AND RECOVERYAustria had, and has, a deeply embedded wine culture. This is embodied in the institution known as the Heurige or Buschenschank. It is described in more detail in the chapter on Vienna, but it was set on a legal basis by Emperor Joseph II on 17 August 1784. A Heurige is an inn at which the proprietor can only serve wine and food of his own production. Known as Heurigen in Vienna, the same kind of inn is more often known as a Buschenschank in other wine regions.
Rules stipulate the opening times for each; they are not year-round establishments. For many Austrians a weekend excursion to a favourite Buschenschank is a popular pastime: a relatively inexpensive way to eat and drink copiously and meet friends.So the Buschenschank, as well as the country''s plethora of other eating and drinking establishments, largely accounted for high levels of domestic consumption. Any exported wines were generally dispatched to Germany, and mostly came from the Burgenland. Until 1922 this region, dominated by its lake-shore resorts, was a popular tourist destination, and German visitors in particular got to know and like its wines, especially the sweeter styles. After the Second World War its popularity accelerated, and the 1970s and early 1980s were boom times for the Burgenland. But this would lead to the Austrian wine industry''s temporary downfall. It was slowly becoming apparent in the 1980s that more wine was being exported than could be produced, both from the Burgenland and from the prestigious but small wine village of Gumpoldskirchen.
Competition to provide wines at the cheapest price meant that while the labelling was alluring, the wine inside the bottle was often dire as well as fraudulent.Then in 1985 it was revealed that many of those exported wines had been adulterated - dosed with diethylene glycol, an antifreeze agent, to simulate sweetness. Only a few fairly large wine producers were implicated, but it was enough to put the brakes on the whole industry. I recall visiting a small merchant house in the Burgenland in the late 1980s, listening as the tearful owner told me she had been besmirched by the skullduggery of others and was on the brink of bankruptcy; her firm no longer exists. Four producers were tried and imprisoned. In Britain I don''t recall seeing a single bottle of Austrian wine for about two years after the scandal broke. In truth, it wasn''t much of a scandal. Nobody got ill, let alone died.
A year later over twenty people died in Italy after drinking adulterated wine, and the Italian wine industry sailed on regardless. So the Austrians felt hard done by, but even innocent producers acknowledge that they knew something fishy had been going on since the late 1970s.The Austrian authorities reacted with speed, prosecuting the culprits and instituting the strictest wine regulations in Europe. It didn''t do much in the short term to restore confidence, but it gradually took effect. The integrity of Austrian wines had been re-established, and the best wines, as well as some mediocre ones, took their place on export markets. My own visits to Austrian wine regions and producers began in the 1970s, when a friend, who lived in Vienna, and I would make excursions at the weekend. The red wines were mostly terrible, but there were many attractive white wines, principally Grüner Veltliner but also from other varieties. Yet this didn''t lead me to take Austrian wines terribly seriously, other than the finest botrytis wines from the Burgenland.
Changes were, however, taking place, especially a move to elegant dry wines in place of the innocuous lightly sweet wines, red as well as white, that were so commonly found in Austria at that time.The scandal re-energised the best producers of Austria, who were dismayed by the damage done to the reputation of their industry. The highly regarded Austrian Wine Academy, which has links to Britain''s Institute of Masters o.