Austria may be best known for its impressive white wines, but a slew of producers are bringing the country into focus with their lighter reds, which are becoming popular overseas, as Arabella Mileham discovers.
Although it has become almost synonymous for its fresh white wines, Austria’s red wines are enjoying a renaissance. Red wine production across Austria has increased from 18% in 2000 to 35% now, and its sales are also seeing a rise. Last month the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (AWBM) reported that international exports grew by more than a quarter.
This is evidence of a new found confidence among Austria’s winemakers and marketers which is making international sommeliers, buyers and wholesalers sit up. Whereas in the past, Austria looked to big oaky blends of international blends, these have made way for lighter yet full flavoured wines that pair extremely well with food, making Austrian reds a unique proposition.
Wine consultant Dirceu Vianna Junior MW sums up the changes. “Producers are picking earlier, looking for freshness and lower alcohol, with less intervention, less oak, less extraction and more precision,” he says. “Also, I sense that producer’s methods of farming are kinder to the environment and the best producers are aiming for lower yields.”
One of the most crucial changes however is the greater focus being put on indigenous varieties in the vineyards. This is part of a wider move to develop a unique red wine style that reflects the geographical, geological and climate conditions of Austria’s individual wine growing regions.
Carnuntum-based winemaker Dorli Muhr points out that Austria has been ‘privileged’ to be able to growth a host of different varieties, both indigenous and international due to its climate and soils, but while this is great for cellar door sales and domestic sales, it’s not enough for the competitive international wine market.
“If you want to show up on a wine list in LA, you must have a specific profile as a region, otherwise there’s no reason to be on that wine list,” she says. “If you want to get into the world, you have to define clearly what is the profile of your region.”
This has been a work in progress for the last twenty years, but is now starting to bear fruit. Because of the diverse topography and geology in Austria’s wine regions in the far east of the county, growers are able to produce a huge diversity of styles and grapes, but it has been in pinpointing what the terroir dictates that has been the key focus. Grapes can achieve physiological ripeness with lower alcohol levels due to the long sunny summers and autumns tempered by cool night, itself the result of the mixture of influences from the Atlantic, Adriatic and Pannonian Basin that meet cooler air coming down from the Baltic. This ensures freshness and great vibrancy to the wines.
From Carnuntum, Thermenregion and Rosalia in Neiderosterreich, south east of Vienna, down through Burgenland – Leithaberg, Neusiedlersee, Mittelburgenland, and Eisenburg, which hug the Hungarian border, i is here that Austria’s indigenous red varieties – primarily Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt and St Laurent – have come into their own.
Blaufränkisch
“Blaufränkisch has really become the shooting star among wine experts worldwide in the past years,” the AWMB argues. It notes its complexity, ability to take oak and its ability to express terroir, which means Blaufränkisch varies widely depending on the regions where it is grown. Accounting for around 19% of Austria’s red varieties (around 3,009 ha), its strongholds are in Mittelburgenland and Eisenberg in the South, as well as Leithaberg, Carnuntum and Rosalia.
Muhr, who farms 11ha of organic vineyards on the Spitzerberg in Carnuntum, an extremely dry limestone outcrop that forms part of the Carpathian mountains, points out some of the differences between these regions.
“In Burgenland, where most of Blaufränkisch is grown, there is the influence of the Lake Neusiedl, which is very large lake and very flat, so there’s a lot of humidity in the air due to evaporation and the vines can mature and producer sugar through photosynthesis using the humidity in the air. In our region, (Carnuntum) there’s no humidity and the wind dries every drop of rain. That means our wines are usually lower in alcohol, at least half a degree or a full degree than in Burgenland and they are more extreme, because they have this fight to survive,” she says.
Carnuntum’s Blaufränkisch has an edginess that she loves, although she admits it can be “more demanding and challenging for the consumer because they are not so easy or even”, and the best wines come from vines aged more than 30 or 40 years old. But it is the in the “shitty years” that the terroir “shows its true quality”.
“The big years that are highly rated over the world need ten more years than the shitty years to get into balance and elegance,” she argues. “It was ‘bad’ years like 2010 and 2014 that really told me how great the terroir is, as [the wines are] so precise and so clear.”
Roland Velich of Weingut Moric, who is based in Neckenmarkt and Lutzmannsburg in Mittelburgenland, argues that although some of Mittelburgenland’s clay soils are “the enemy of the variety”, there are pockets of limestone, schist and some volcanic spots across the region which lends different characters in Blaufränkisch grown there. “The influence of Lake Neusiedl is also less evident the further south you go, and its higher elevation helping give a longer vegetation period, which is important for the variety,” he says.
“There is quite a bit of tenderness in Blaufränkisch, but quite a bit of acidity too, so we have to get those ingredients right and get the balance and ripeness. With Blaufränkisch, the true phenolics are much more important than sugar levels.”
He explains that the more limestone shelly, salty soils lend the wine more red fruit and flora, “especially if it’s had some years maturation in the bottle”, while wines from schist have red cherry and raspberry, more blue and black fruit characters, as well as pine trees, and more herbaceous notes, such as mint.
“When you are going more far south to Eisenburg region, you have grey and green schist which gives a very spicy character, it’s also cooler, high elevation at 400m.”
Zweigelt
The influence of Lake Neusiedl is not only climatic. Its alluvial soils of black soil with sand, clay, loess and gravels to red, iron rich roil, provide ideal conditions for Austria’s most widely planted red grape, Zweigelt.
Torsten Aumuller, managing director of Verein Neusiedlersee DAC said that the ‘typical’ profile for Zweigelt Neusiedlersee DAC compared to other region is its salinity, due to the influence of salt and soda basins set around the lake, along with warm fruit aroma and juiciness.
He also argues that the DAC stystem set up more than 20 years ago has driven the move away from international varieties, which were widely planted in the region in the 80s and 90s. “We seem to trust more and more our own history & variety,” he notes.
Dirceu agrees that the DAC system has helped, pointing out that in Neusiedlersee in particular, it is signposted clearly to consumers so they know what to expect.
“Classic style’ are fruit forward wines without oak characteristics while ‘Reserve Style’ (which are 100% Zweigelt) are wines with clear oak influence,” he explains. “This makes consumer’s life easier and this is what is required.”
Zweigelt also grows well in Carnuntum, where it grows in loamy soils that once formed ancient river beds and the Pannonian Sea.
As Christina Netzl, winemaker at Weingut Franz & Christine Netzl in Gottlesbrunn points out, “everyone says they know Zweigelt, but we try to show that they don’t know our Zweigelt. It’s something completely different, it’s something we have to work really hard for as a region.”
Zweigelt in Carnuntum has very ripe, fruit driven aromas, silky tannins and “a very nice peppery spice on the palace,” she explains. (This pepperiness can also be found on the region’s Sankt Laurent too which she argues is unique to Carnuntum). Switching to organic has helped the grapes retain higher freshness, she says, and different plots are also treated differently – “if it’s a hot side, we keep more leaves, if it’s a cooler side, we give the vines more sun, so we vary it a little bit,” she explains.
Like Muhr and Velich, she keeps intervention to a minimum, not pumping over, giving the berries a soft start to the maceration and fermentation process to give soft extraction of the tannins and more fruit “which I think is great for the regional style”. She has also dialled back on new oak, using bigger barrels to give a lower toasting, while the wines benefit from more time on the lees.
Red blends
However as Netzl points outs, her focus, and the goal of the region is not so much about promoting a particular variety as creating a unique style for the region that expresses the terroir. Carnuntum DAC, which was founded in 2019, has embraced the new pyramid system of regional wine (Gebietsweine) village wine (Ortsweine) and single-vineyard wines (Riedenweine) which better reflects its unique properties.
“As a winemaker I have to see which varieties feel well or does well in this area and reflects the region the best,” Netzl explains. “When focussing on the style of a single vineyard or special origin wine, then for me, the grape variety is not important anymore.”
“The goal of the future is to create our own style or market our unique style for the region focusing on the origin not just the grape variety.” She argues that there is high potential for Austria’s red blends as Austria’s regions become more established in the consumer’s mind and as more DAC’s embrace the pyramid system.
“Once we go away from the idea of blends being blends from anyway, the potential will be to focus on the origin and special places. Then it won’t matter if it is a single variety or a blend anymore,” she explains.
Styria, Kamptal and Carnuntum have already adopted the pyramid system, and Vienna is set to follow, which Netzl argues will make it an easier system to communicate to international consumers.
“It’s starting to work, but it will take a few years,” Netzl adds.
St Laurent
Completing the trio is Sankt Laurent, which was created in xxx as a hybrid of xxx and xxxx does well on limestone.
Speaking at a recent tasting of wines from Neusiedlersee, Sarah Jane Evans, MW noted that the variety had great consumer appeal, however due to the fact that it is difficult to grow there are still only 732 ha of Sankt Laurent are under vine. There are pockets in Leithaberg, Carnuntum, and Gols in the Neusiedlersee DAC, but it is more widely grown in northern Burgenland and Thermenregion, where regional discussion are ongoing about the implementation of a DAC system.
As Leithaberg producer Erwin Tinhof of Weingut Tinhof argues, “If you like Sankt Laurent, you’ll plant it, if you don’t, you’ll never try to. It’s a variety have to have a personal relationship with.
He points out that its thin skins and the compactness of the berries means disease spreads very quickly and affect the whole bunch. However it gives “lovely feminine stylish, elegant, shy wines, which is a very popular style”.
“It’s not a monster wine, not with lots of new oak, not with sweetness extracted from it. We’re looking for more a more elegant, fruity wine with more spiciness”
One advantage is its natural tendency to restrain its sugar content. “Even in warm or hot vintages it always keeps a medium, lithe body with lots of drinkability and elegance” – a quality likely to become even more important with climate change, the AWMB points out.
Michael Reinisch, of Johanneshof Reinisch points out that it needs very poor soil to achieve great quality and retrain its natural vigour. “We harvest St. Laurent about a week later than Pinot Noir, although usually it’s the other way in other Austrian wine regions.”
As Velich argues the wine culture is clearly in development in Austria in a very positive way, not just in terms of wine growing but also marketing and distribution. “We have a lot of great guys and a lot of commercial projects, but it is changing a lot,” he says.
“I’m convinced it’s great terroir, it’s a very old wine growing area, we have a chance in our generation to bring it back to the minds and palates of consumers. And that’s our job.”
