Austrians wine culture reaches back to the beginning of civilization, Celts started to produce wine and since that time there has always been modernization in combination with the knowledge of previous generations. However this history of wine had ups and downs, several times production came close to a halt. Royal patrons, monasteries and clever vinification helped to overcome climate catastrophes, several wars and vermin plagues. At the end of the 20th century Austria has once again become a wine producer of first class wine, but still, few people know of the exquisite wines you're able to find amidst this superb landscape.

 

In a Celtic burial mound artifacts show that by 700 B.C. there was already cultivation of wine identified as vitis vinifera, which is still used for making wine. This disprove believes that Romans had brought the wine along with their conquest (15 B.C.). However they had a considerable thirst, therefore improved and spread the viniculture all over their province of Regnum Noricum , which includes most parts of present-day Austria . In the biography of St. Severin, written by Eugippius (511 A.D.), mentions vineyards in the region which is today known as Mautern in the Wachau. The decay of the Roman Imperia in the 5th century, political instability and the invasion of the barbarians led to the destruction of cultivated land and wine production nearly stopped.

When Charlemagne conquered Eastern Europe (around 800 A.D.) including most parts of Austria , stable times began and itinerant wine experts and the viticultural treatise Capitulare de Villis caused a major change. Grapes were classified, and especially delicious grapes were named fr a nkisch, e.g. Blaufrankisch.

In the Middle Ages cultivation of land was mainly done by monasteries, also was production of wine. The strongest influences were the monastery of Bavaria in the west, and monks from Burgundy in the Burgenland at that time part of Hungary . The demand was enormous so not only in eastern Austria wine was made, but also in Tyrol and Salzburg too; this was partly possible because from the 9th-14th centuries the weather in Europe was rather mild.

In 1526 the first official Trockenbeerenauslesen (TBA), from the noble rot botryis, was documented to be made "in the hills around Donnerskirchen" (Burgenland). The last of this most exquisite dessert wine was drunk 326 Years later in 1852 with quite some respect for Austrian wine makers.

The 17th century was a very difficult time for winemakers, the growing popularity of beer, devastation, dearth, depopulation and rising taxes caused by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), furthermore Vienna was under siege by the Turkish for the second time (1683).

In the following century vinification had two famous patrons' Empress Maria Theresa (reign from 1740-1780) and her son Josef II Holy Roman Emperor (from 1765 - 1790), they reformed the administration and conducted a tax reform. Josef, often refered to as an enlighted emperor, and his reforms were not popular within his subjects, but still he legalized that farmers could sell their own products directly for consumption. So he fathered a typical Austrian tradition - the Heurigen or Buschenschank. Anyone willing to sell goods could signalize that by hanging a bunch of pine branches above their gate. Lately plaited straw hoops with a green light bulb in the center are used too.

In the 19th century the little ice age (15th-19th centuries) with its rather cold winters and summers ended, but that warming couldn't last long. The eruption of the volcano Mount Trambora in Indonesia in April 1815 caused a severe global cooling. The year 1816 became known as "the year without a summer", with snow and frost in summer destroying crops in North America and Europe , which was still suffering from the Napoleonic Wars (1802-1815).

Vine infections brought to Europe with imported American vine stocks nearly destroyed the entire European wine production.

Oidium and Peronospora (fungi) destroyed the plants and fruits, while phylloxera, a tiny aphid, attacked the roots. Phylloxera was then fought by the now common method of grafting a European scion on a native American rootstock.

The viniculture school of Klosterneuburg established in 1860, thus being the oldest in the world, helped the catastrophe befallen wine industry to recover.

The following two World Wars ended with the consumption of the entire wine supply, Austria 's wine cellars literally were drunken empty, just like when Napoleons army had occupied Austria more than a century earlier.

1985 was the year of the glycol wine fraud which damaged Austrian wines reputation, although this scandal led to the adoption of one of the strictest wine laws world wide. This change of mind from quantity to emphasis on quality, made it possible to become top world class. The emphasis of present well-trained young wine makers is to keep the quality high and come up with new ideas and innovations, offering the costumer a wide range of delicious, exquisite wines to explore.