Wine regions of the world, 4 Austria.

Difficult this one for me as have no real experience of Austrian wine, apart fro the odd bottle of rather crisp white I know very little on experience.  However, like most things you can find out lots for reference books and that is as good a place as any.  The thing is that you tend to find it clumped together with the wines of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Slovene.  And as it shares border with those countries it seem to undervalue what I can say what I have had is a excellent product.  Not that the wines of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Slovene are bad wines, it is just that they are preserved to be so.  In fact, it could be said that I have had more wines form Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Slovene than I have from Austria. It could be that Austrian wine is very much thought to be like German wine and now is rather looked down on by the British wine drinking public.  And the wine does share a common grape varieties, labelling and styles.  However, the wine form what I have had has a more varied and full boded flavour over all.

Why Austrian wine is not more wide spread is not the fact that it is new to the region.  Wine has been made in the country since before the Romans.  Then a bit of a dark age after the Romans with the barbarians taking over but under Charlemagne viticulture flourished.  Then during the Napoleonic wars, it had a set back but apart from that it has be produced in the area for most of history.  The real truth is that it might be in the wine had a massif set back in the 80s as in 1985 it was published in the press that Austrian wine had Antifreeze in it . But it never did have, what it had was Diethylene Glycol, a quit harmless additive, but illegal all the same.  The reason for putting it in the wine was to make sweet wine taste sweeter.  It was all some kind of strange thing to pass Austria wine of as German.  After this, I think the image of the wine has been damages and has never recovered by those who remember.  After that and the rise of the new world wines, it has never captured the imagination of a British market.

So what will you get if you go out and look for Austrian wine.  Well the truth is that you can get quite a range and variety of all kinds of wine. From the very dry to the very sweet and good solid reds as well.  There are I think about thirteen different regions and about 11 different clarifications of wine . The one I do know a bit about is the Eiswein , or “Ice wine”.  This is when the grapes are picked frozen on the vine and then pressed and this makes a sweeter wine . But just to say they are sweet wines does not do them any justice at all . They have a very rich and full caricature that is so delightfully distinct that it is a real pleasure to drink them.

So to sum up Austrian wine is, I think from all that I have experienced, a really good wine producing country.  Perhaps to long living in the shadow of the German wines and having suffered a set back that it seems never to have recovered from.  So I say now is the time go to your wine store and find out the bottle of Austrian wine , I think you could be surprised when you drink it how good it is .

I know I always am .