📍 Weinviertel

Weinviertel (“wine quarter”) is Austria's largest wine area, in the north-east of the country, in Lower Austria, from Vienna to the Czech border. It is part of Lower Austria. The name goes back to an old division of the land into four “quarters”. Today the Weinviertel is a true wine plain with hills, loess slopes and hundreds of small cellars.

The climate is continental: warm, dry summers, cool nights and cold winters. The main grape is Grüner Veltliner, on which DAC Weinviertel is built, Austria's first appellation of this kind, introduced with the 2002 vintage. Classic Grüner Veltliner is light and fresh with a bright peppery note, called “Pfefferl” in Austria. Reserve wines are fuller and more aged.

Next to it grows Frühroter Veltliner, an old local grape with reddish skin, along with other varieties. Reds, rosés and sparkling wines are also made here.

The Weinviertel is also famous for “cellar lanes”: rows of old wine cellars on the edges of villages, where people traditionally come to taste wine. Vienna lies to the south and Czechia to the north. Young Grüner Veltliner goes well with cold cuts, light dishes and roast poultry, and in Vienna it is often served in “Heuriger” taverns.