Austria. Wine with a Difference!

Remarks on Austrian Wines from Mary Ewing-Mulligan, Master of Wine and President, International Wine Center

New York, May 11, 2004

As a wine educator and writer, I have traveled all over the world, visiting wine regions, meeting wine producers and tasting wines in the environment where they are born. The world has no shortage of beautiful wine regions, great wines, and talented winemakers. But from the very first day I spent in Austria eleven years ago, I sensed that this wine country was special. Through subsequent visits and in my experiences with Austrian wines here in the U.S., I remain convinced of that.

From my international perspective, I believe that the strong points of Austrian wine are the following:

Austria is a small wine country, whose wines are produced mainly by small wineries from estate-grown grapes. In wine terms, “small” often (but not necessarily) means great, and it almost always means “authentic.”

The winemakers of Austria are the most committed, quality-driven, high integrity group of wine producers that I have ever met.

For a small wine country, Austria has an amazing variety of climate-soil-topography combinations that enable different grape varieties to ripen in different places. This means that the wines have true regional color.

Austria’s leading grape variety, Grüner Veltliner, makes truly delicious, high quality wines.

Besides specializing in “aromatic white wines” such as Grüner Veltliner and Riesling— dry but flavorful, unoaked whites, an increasingly popular style of wine among sommeliers in the U.S.—Austria makes a whole range of wine styles, including spicy reds such as Zweigelt and full-bodied, powerful reds such as some of the wines from Neusiedlersee.

Austria, true to its European roots, has a real wine culture. This culture expresses itself in the country’s restaurants, its heurigen, its people and their hospitality.

It is certainly possible to appreciate Austrian wines through the wines themselves, as wine drinkers here in the U.S. are increasingly doing—and I highly recommend that. But those who are lucky enough to visit Austria and experience the wines within the context of the Austrian wine culture will gain an indelible admiration of them, and will come to appreciate Austria as the greatest little wine country of all.

Mary Ewing-Mulligan, MW is co-author of the best-selling Wine For Dummies and heads the International Wine Center in New York City, which is the U.S. Headquarters for the wine courses of London's Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET).