Wine and Food Diary of Giles MacDonogh

Austria Burns

Written by Giles MacDonogh

Austria Burns

Posted: 1st September 2017

At the end of August I enjoyed a glorious five days in sunny Austria. When I arrived it was a modest and bearable 27 degrees. When I left it was a sweltering, unbearable 34. Most people were predicting a very early harvest, probably in the first or second week of September. I went east first, to the region of Carnuntum which is only half an hour away from Vienna, beginning near the airport at Schwechat and ending just beyond the walled town of Hainburg and not only in sight of the screaming spires of Bratislava but of both Slovakian and Hungarian Borders.

Carnuntum is the hottest part of Lower Austria and has developed a justified reputation as a red wine area – Zweigelt in the west and Blaufränkisch in the east; but there is the usual story – Viennese wine lovers like to stock up on a range of different wines from local producers – and that means that many growers offer a gamut of up to a dozen, and not always the ones that might reasonably be expected to prosper. Many plant Grüner Veltliner in soils that are simply too dry.

It was naturally not my first visit to Carnuntum, as long ago as 1991, I spent a day there organised by the German vet Florian Kruse and tasted some of the up-and-coming producers. Those people have now truly upped and come. Walter Glatzer was one, and the Artner family, as well as my friend Hans Pitnauer, who seems to have beaten his own path and left the organisation that is planning to produce a vineyard classification for the region.

About the author

Giles MacDonogh

Leave a Comment

Pin It on Pinterest

error: Content is protected !!