Austrian White Wines
Austria makes wonderful white wine, in all styles from bone dry to superbly sweet but sadly, there isn’t enough Austrian wine!
Austria is a country with a strong and historic wine-drinking culture, but it only produces as much wine as a middle-sized region of France, for example the Loire. Export isn’t necessarily a priority for many growers, but fortunately some of the top producers do want to see their wines on a world stage, where they have proved they can shine.
The vineyards all lie in the east of the country, around Vienna, downstream along the Danube to the west, and in a wide band south to Styria. Best known are white wines, particularly from Riesling - which here becomes a dry, high alcohol wine much more in the Alsace style than the German - and Gruner Veltliner, the latter grown in Austria since Roman times and now taking a third of the country’s vineyards. The top examples of both these varieties make very food-friendly wines, with the weight and structure to accompany rich or spicy dishes, and both can age superbly, with the best examples of the latter taking on the minerality and complexity of fine white Burgundy.
Austria is also the source of some of the greatest sweet wines in the world. Key to this is the Neuesiedlersee, an enormous shallow lake south-east of Vienna, which creates a perfect micro-climate for the development of noble rot in the surrounding vineyards through long, warm and dry autumns.
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A single vineyard, barrel-fermented Chardonnay that easily rivals Cote d'Or Burgundy at the...
OriginAustria
RegionRied Kaiserberg
ColourWhite
ABV14%
Bottle75cl
CodeART921
GrapeChardonnay
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A steep, stony vineyard on gneiss and mica schist. Very open perfume of lime zest, floral notes...
OriginAustria
RegionKamptal
ColourWhite
ABV13.5%
Bottle75cl
CodeSAX821
GrapeRiesling
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Bouvier, perhaps a natural relation of Pinot Blanc, was only discovered c.1900. It’s largely...
OriginAustria
RegionBurgenland
ColourWhite
ABV10.5%
Bottle75cl
CodeART721
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Lovely combination of the green appley freshness of the cooler 2021 vintage with the typical...
OriginAustria
RegionKamptal
ColourWhite
ABV12.5%
Bottle75cl
CodeSAX721
GrapeGruner Veltliner
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Frühroter Veltliner (also known, confusingly, as Malvasier in Austria and Germany), a cross...
OriginAustria
RegionKamptal
ColourWhite
ABV12.5%
Bottle75cl
CodeSAX621
GrapeFruhroter Veltliner
From 50+ year old vines growing on meagre topsoil over slate in a high, south-east facing,...
OriginAustria
RegionKamptal
ColourWhite
ABV13.5%
Bottle75cl
CodeSAX420
GrapeRiesling