Austrian Red Wines Take Center Stage

You’ll fall for Austrian red wines faster than you can say gruner veltliner. The country’s flagship white grape and racy Rieslings helped cement Austria as a serious wine region, but it is the indigenous reds of Mozart’s homeland that are currently grabbing the spotlight in the wine trade.

One of the largest trade tastings ever of Austrian wines took place earlier this month in San Francisco. And it got a lot of wine buyers and sommeliers buzzing about spicy zweigelt, velvety blaufrankisch, earthy St. Laurent, and other native red grapes that make up a surprisingly large part of the country’s winegrape acreage — 34 percent.

In fact, in the past decade, the production of red varieties —particularly St. Laurent, with its aromatic, pinot noir-like characteristics — has increased by at least 25 percent, according to figures from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board. And they’re more than palatable: Balanced and fruity with good acidity and an easy price tag. Furthermore, thanks to their low alcohol levels, Austrian reds are fantastic with a wide variety of foods, from crisp Wiener schnitzel to Vietnamese rack of lamb.

Isn’t Austria too cold for red grapes to fully mature? Not quite. The country is much warmer than its wine producing giant of a neighbor, Germany. And even though Austria shares its latitude with chilly Burgundy, summers in the easternmost Burgenland — home to full-bodied red wines — can get hot.

The majority of vineyards are planted in the south and east parts of Austria. There are even 1,500 acres planted within the city limits of Vienna, making it the world’s only major wine-growing capitol, as well as home to traditional wine taverns, or Heurigen, which date back to the 1780s. Even the deeply fruity blaufrankisch probably dates back to the time of Charlemagne.