Austria Pure Wine Motion — The place to Drink

“Austria’s Tuscany” was my vacation spot: the wine area of Sudsteiermark, or Southern Styria, within the foothills alongside the Slovenian border. However on this small nation recognized for alpine sports activities, excessive tradition, and Weiner schnitzel, all roads result in Vienna. So the day earlier than I set out on a spring driving tour of wine nation, I discovered myself within the imperial metropolis, opening the home windows at Resort Sacher to absorb the scrumptious climate. My elegant suite was a composition of eau de Nil wall cloth, ecru silk curtains, and molded paneling in eggshell hues, and it gave me an thought to check out over dinner. 

At a relaxed farm-to-table bistro close by (Restaurant Schubert, sadly now closed), the twenty-something proprietor seated me on the terrace and recommended I let him deal with the ordering. I agreed, and requested him to additionally select two Austrian wines. My thought, I defined, was to match one “traditional” from a landmark Austrian vineyard, one thing within the faultless Resort Sacher method, with an equal “pure” wine. The proprietor’s eyes lit up. He knew what to do. (There is no such thing as a actual definition, however usually wines bought as pure, or low-intervention, come from natural or biodynamic grapes fermented with wild yeast and handled with minimal sulfur.) 

Out got here a development of lovely seasonal dishes. White asparagus with grilled romaine and diced rhubarb in a pool of pea emulsion. A frilly salad of sheer carrot ribbons. Delicately poached salmon trout. Jerusalem-artichoke sorbet with preserved quince for dessert. It was a culinary sketch of springtime in Austria: the style of nature, and an ideal counterpoint to the refinement of the Resort Sacher.

As for the wines, there was a misunderstanding. The proprietor introduced me two glasses — for every course. Eight nice wines in complete, each one in every of them elegant and exact. And from every pairing, no doubt, I most popular the pure wine. Why? They’d appeal, individuality, sprint. They had been enjoyable, however not within the raveled means of many pure wines I’d tried previously. 

I texted the outcomes of my experiment to Marko Kovac, cofounder of Karakterre, the natural-wine honest in Eisenstadt that was to be the ultimate cease on my itinerary. 

“What have you ever folks carried out to my palate?” I teased. “There’s no going again,” he replied.

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Austria’s Strategy to Pure Wine

To every his personal, in fact, and a few drinkers will at all times favor the classical fashion. However what I found on the natural-wine route via Southern Styria and adjoining Burgenland — areas recognized, respectively, for fresh-as-springwater whites and reds nimbler than a Strauss waltz — is that Austria is just not a cool place, wine-wise. The low-intervention bottles I sampled had been faultless and refined, with not one of the barnyard aromas, kombucha fizz, and sour-grape tang tolerated by vintners in different, much less exacting corners of the world. By the top of the journey, it occurred to me that Austria might be the world’s most approachable gateway to pure wine.

Now and again, I put down my glass to soak within the historical past of those culturally wealthy borderlands, which had been as soon as not on the edge however in the course of a European superpower. “Austria used to go all the best way south to Trieste,” one sommelier jogged my memory. Austro-Hungary’s Hapsburg dynasty had counted Styria amongst its possessions since 1278; on the eve of World Struggle I, it dominated as a constitutional monarchy over such far-flung cities as Trieste, Budapest, Prague, Kraków, and Sarajevo. 

Sources, concepts, and influences from throughout the realm entered the nation’s cultural DNA. I stored catching glimpses of elsewhere within the meals, the palaces, the polychrome church buildings, the stone village homes, the timber farms — every a hint of that cosmopolitan empire.

Much more vivid than the area’s historical past was the glowing presence of nature. Southern Austria was in full flower throughout my journey: lilac and elder within the forested Styrian hills, honey locust and wild rose on the plains of Burgenland, a perfumed panorama that rushed in via my open automobile window. In all places I used to be met with the bloom of well being. At little taverns, backyard pickings stuffed the menus, and at evening the family-run inns smelled of air-dried linen. Of us carried themselves with a way of contentment and good humor, as in the event that they weren’t too busy to open a bottle of wine at lunch or saunter off for a day hike.

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A Go to to Graz, the Capital of Styria

Midway to Graz, the storybook capital of Styria, inexperienced hills gently gathered themselves up from the graceful plains just like the skirt of a couture ball robe. Graz was as soon as an imperial metropolis, like Vienna, nevertheless it has a distinctly southern publicity. I had the unusual sensation, as I walked into the UNESCO-designated historic middle via plazas planted with olive timber, that I may really feel a Mediterranean breeze. It was because the Hapsburgs wished. Within the sixteenth century they introduced in Italian architects to replace their drab medieval metropolis. Domenico dell’Allio delivered them a colonnaded palace that’s now residence to the provincial parliament. On the close by central sq. a hulking city corridor, the Hauptplatz, bristles with architectural doodads like an outdated Baroque pile however is virtually new, put up in 1893 by city-proud residents who paid for it with a tax on wine.

I ducked in to Gasthaus Stainzerbauer, a conventional tavern, for lunch. The day by day particular was white asparagus, heat potatoes, and mâche, a small salad inexperienced, drizzled with pumpkin-seed oil, a neighborhood delicacy so intensely inexperienced it left grassy stains on my serviette. This was traditional Styrian cooking, and it will be the baseline towards which I measured that evening’s dinner at Broadmoar, a countryside restaurant and inn run by progressive chef Johann Schmuck. 

Though it sits barely past the Graz suburbs, Broadmoar appeared to exist on the far facet of enchantment, in a setting of horse pastures, shadowy woods, and blooming hedgerows. I went for a stroll throughout golden hour and time appeared suspended: dandelions of their uncountable quantity had flowered, however the puffballs had not but puffed away. At dinner, Schmuck’s menu explored the exact micro season of the farm throughout 11 programs, every accompanied by low-intervention wines from small regional producers. Practically each plate was sprinkled with the wild edibles I’d seen underfoot on my stroll: oxalis, chickweed, yarrow, subject garlic, rumex, bishop’s weed, cress, and nettles that stung lower than ours in the US. In contrast with lunch, this was Styria at its most pure.

A cock crowed. Throughout the valley one other answered. It was 4:21 a.m., and the skylight above my mattress was open. Quickly the sunshine rose and, with it, essentially the most flamboyant birdsong I’d heard since a morning on the Serengeti a few years in the past. Among the many refrain, a cuckoo referred to as. I had by no means heard one earlier than, nevertheless it couldn’t have been the rest: it sounded precisely like a cuckoo clock. 

In some way my head felt nice regardless of the earlier evening’s many glasses of analysis. Pure-wine proponents declare their low-sulfur tipple causes much less of a hangover, or perhaps it was only a good evening’s sleep within the super-oxygenated air. However in any case, I used to be absolutely charged to drive about 45 minutes south, practically to the border with Slovenia, to fulfill a world-renowned guru of natural-wine making, Sepp Muster, and his spouse/collaborator, Maria.

There was no mistaking the Muster vineyards. Typical administration practices suppress the whole lot that isn’t vine by mowing, tilling, and spraying herbicide with an depth that ranges from anal-retentive to paranoid. The Musters do the other. They invite in unruly nature and encourage its residency amongst their vines. I may distinguish a dozen sorts of rival wildflowers and broad-leaf vegetation within the thick grass. Pollinators buzzed previous. Swarms of smaller bugs, backlit by the morning solar, had been snatched from the air by avian patrols. 

Sepp greeted me on the steps of the couple’s gently worn 18th-century farmhouse and toured me via the vineyards, established on land his father acquired in 1978. “We belief each plant is rising on the suitable spot,” Muster mentioned of the inexperienced exuberance, “as a result of that’s the best way nature works. If the soil is alive, the whole lot works.” Sturdy and jolly in his center years, Sepp sounded by turns like a humble farmer, a smart ecologist, a local weather scientist, a authorities agronomist, and a Druidic excessive priest. One other secret: he doesn’t make the wine. “I’m observing,” he mentioned in succinct abstract of all the low-intervention ethos. On this worldview, the wine is made “within the winery”: the vines themselves create a self-portrait of the 12 months to seize in a wine bottle. We joined Maria at a desk within the half-wild backyard, and Sepp uncorked a number of bottles. “We are able to really feel this complexity within the wine,” he mentioned, swirling a glass. “It’s not a bodily sensation; it’s simply very nice, elegant flavors.” 

The shock was that Styria has traditionally not been recognized for its nice wine, although grapevines had been first recorded within the space within the seventeenth century, Sepp mentioned, however on the flip of the twentieth century extra grapes had been being grown commercially on the Slovenian facet of the border. The rationale needed to do with politics, to an extent, however principally with local weather. Styria was too chilly. A warming development reached a historic milestone with the proper 1992 rising season. Sepp in contrast the present local weather situations with these of Burgundy within the 70s and 80s — wine-making Valhalla. 

That evening I stayed close by at Weingut Tauss, a vineyard and inn outdoors the village of Schlossberg run by Alice and Roland Tauss. Breakfast the subsequent morning was served open air on tablecloths the identical milky blue as the brilliant, humid sky. Alice Tauss put out whole-wheat bread, excellent house-made jam, and a scramble of orange-yolked eggs drizzled with the ever-present pumpkin-seed oil. She moved among the many tables in a nutmeg linen skirt, an image of well being and good conscience. Roland had the acute, assessing look of a hyper-educated fowl and sported a New Wave haircut. Within the tasting room, they described their intent, as winemakers, to bottle a way of concord and “lifeness,” their time period for the spirit of biodiversity that animates the meadow-like vineyards.

“In German, winery is Weingarten, a wine backyard,” Alice advised me. “We do a variety of work for our place to be a backyard. For us, additionally it is a harvest to see the wildflowers and listen to the birds.” 

Below the affect of their swish wines, I felt myself falling in love with the day, the place, the couple’s animist spirituality, the entire bucolic imaginative and prescient. Longtime prospects had the other response when the vineyard first went pure a decade in the past. They fled, “100%,” Roland mentioned. “On this area, folks don’t drink our wine,” he continued, an edge in his voice. The Tausses additionally confronted scorn from conventionally minded neighbors who thought of their nonconformist strategies eccentric and presumably lunatic.

I drove away with a larger appreciation for the nerve proven by Styria’s pure winemakers in breaking away from the institution, with its rule books and official tasting panels that resolve if a bottling can carry the label of “Qualitätswein.” A number of years again, a wine submitted by the Musters failed to fulfill all 10 high quality requirements — a truth Maria shared with a twinkle of satisfaction. 

The Closing Leg of the Highway Journey

For those who can title any crimson from Austria, it’s in all probability Blaufränkisch, the wine for which Burgenland — Austria’s easternmost and least populous state — is finest recognized. (Bonus factors for naming Zweigelt, the area’s different broadly planted crimson.) Historically, native growers went 50-50 on white versus crimson, defined Martin Lichtenberger, who makes wine in Breitenbrunn together with his Spanish spouse, Adriana González. The stability shifted within the Nineteen Eighties, because of European Union subsidies, however the couple seeks out outdated plots that escaped uprooting. “Every has its personal historical past, which you respect,” Lichtenberger mentioned. “You don’t have to boost the vines anymore. However you’re taking them by the hand and lead them your means.”

“We’re a bit romantic,” mentioned González of their ardour for gnarled vines set in imperfect rows. However in relation to cellar work, they favor “severe” wines, which means the other of funky. (At Karakterre, Judith Beck, the gifted maker of whistle-clean wines, equally mentioned, unsmilingly, “I’m a severe individual, and I take what I do very critically.”)

What Burgenland has over Styria is scale — it’s doable to go large on this flat acreage. The one Austrian natural-wine producer whose bottles I can discover dependably in wine shops across the U.S. is Meinklang, which is headquartered on the southeastern finish of Lake Neusiedl in Pamhagen, a bottle toss from Hungary. 

The farmers behind the model, the Michlits household, have lived within the area for seven generations and now hold 200 of their roughly 6,000 acres in wine grapes. The varied operation contains grain for beer and cattle for beef, and all of it runs on rules established by the thinker Rudolf Steiner. Born in Austro-Hungary in 1861, Steiner created biodynamics, a means of farming that mixes natural strategies (cattle manure for fertilizer) with esoteric rituals supposed to attract down cosmic energies, or one thing like that. Biodynamics is a mash-up of premodern farming traditions, neo-pagan animism, liturgical precision, and recordkeeping worthy of the papal paperwork. Name it non secular agronomy for brief — or name it whack-a-doodle nonsense — however both means, biodynamics is a power within the wine world. 

Many of the locations I visited alongside Austria’s natural-wine route had been licensed biodynamic; Meinklang’s spectacular winery-slash-tasting room does all of them one higher. The constructing is designed in response to anthroposophist rules — extra Steiner woo-woo — and makes use of eco-friendly constructing supplies similar to an all-wood roof construction and rammed-earth flooring and partitions. Farmer Werner Michlits and collaborating winemaker Niklas Peltzer led me via a leisurely tasting and defined their aim: to supply approachable “bridge wines” that should be reasonably priced, sincere, and straightforward to take pleasure in.

Just like the Meinklang guests’ middle, Burgenland as an entire is properly kitted out for guests. I loved a hipster hangout, Neusiedler, the place the tattooed era gathers for grass-fed burgers and natty Blaufränkisch, in addition to Michelin-starred stops for the types of high-end vacationers who return to Vienna with their trunks filled with wine. 

The area’s star institution is Taubenkobel, a Relais & Châteaux resort that opened 41 years in the past as a easy B&B. As of late, the founders’ daughter, co-owner Barbara Eselböck, and her husband, chef Alain Weissgerber, ship out 12 programs for lunch. (The perfect was a one-bite lovage tart; second finest was a scoop of rhubarb ice cream cupped by radicchio leaves like pink-speckled clamshells.)

The gaggle of wines accompanying the meal included a number of from Intestine Oggau, a vineyard launched in 2007 by the Taubenkobel founders’ different daughter, Stephanie, and her husband, Eduard Tscheppe, who was previously a standard winemaker in Styria. Lunch proved past a doubt how Austrian pure wines can pair with even essentially the most refined delicacies. To not say they had been totally typical — some had been nonetheless somewhat unbuttoned by the strictest requirements of propriety. An archconservative on an Austrian wine board’s tasting panel may properly have discovered fault.

However a T-shirt I noticed at Karakterre earlier within the day captured the rising confidence and mischievous spirit of the gang gathered there, who care much less yearly what typical arbiters suppose — as a result of they’re too busy promoting wine. It was the equal of a one-finger salute geared toward critic Robert Parker, who as soon as dominated supreme because the wine business’s world arbiter because of his 100-point score system and desire for opulent, conventionally “excellent” wines. It learn: parker gave me 50. 

The place to Keep and Sip Pure Wine in Austria

Vienna

Resort Sacher Wien: The grande dame of Vienna inns, subtly refreshed in 2018, stays a paragon of classical class. Breakfast is served within the excellent ballroom.

Meinklang Hofladen: The in-town “farm store” from Austria’s largest pure vineyard multitasks as a espresso home, all-day café, bakery, wine bar, and wine store, provided by the Michlits household’s Burgenland property.

Styria

Broadmoar: This restaurant-guesthouse provides hyperlocal gastronomy and easy lodging on a picturesque horse farm outdoors Graz.

Weingut Tauss: Naked-bones however endearing, this biodynamic vineyard and inn is surrounded by gardens, wildflowers, and vine-covered hillsides.

Gasthaus Restaurant Thaller: Modern nice eating on the church sq. of Veit am Vogau, with a deep wine listing of bottles from native legends Maria and Sepp Muster.

Gasthaus Stainzerbauer: A comfortable tavern within the historic middle of Graz that highlights conventional Styrian components.

Lilli & Jojo: Calling itself a Wirtshaus, or wine tavern, this cease alongside the wine route charms with elevated nation cooking and a pleasant welcome.

Ploder Rosenberg: Run by two generations who’re obsessed with biodynamic wine-making however are delightfully relaxed amongst their vines. Tastings and guided visits can be found. 

Weingut Tement: This huge, family-owned biodynamic vineyard straddles the Austria-Slovenia border and provides tastings — and vistas — on the terrace. 

Burgenland

Intestine Purbach: High quality eating within the village of Purbach with a hearty nose-to-tail menu for adventurous eaters and fashionable visitor rooms in an historical stone home.

Neusiedler: An informal natural-wine bar that includes bottles from Meingklang, Judith Beck, and Lichtenberger González, plus grass-fed burgers and snacks.

Taubenkobel: The area’s main resort provides luxurious lodging, plus a seasonal tasting menu in the principle eating room ($160) and easier bistro fare at Greisslerei (entrées $15–$47). In each, wines from Intestine Oggau characteristic prominently.

A model of this story first appeared within the August 2024 situation of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Pure Choice.”