Districtus Orange Controllatus
Does Burgenland deserve a dedicated appellation just for orange wines?
This article was originally published by Trink Magazine on May 26th 2025, with the title Burgenland Orange: A New Shade for the DAC? Here’s a link to the original piece. This version has been slightly edited, following additional input from and others.
When Italy’s Collio DOC voted in December 2024 to include orange wines in their disciplinare, the news barely caused a ripple on the global wine lake’s surface. I reported on it here, in a mild state of shock. One of Italy’s most conservative appellations had just voted to allow orange wines to bear its hallowed classification.
My surprise was that the DOC had so dramatically embraced change. The decision otherwise made sense: the Collio is ground zero when it comes to orange wine. It was here, after all, that seminal growers like Gravner and Radikon redefined skin-fermented white wines in the late 1990s. Once considered heretics, their approach is now established worldwide. If Italy’s wine bureaucracy could embrace this change, why not Austria too? I was reminded of a question Michael Moosbrugger, director of Schloss Gobelsburg in Kamptal, once asked me: could I imagine an Austrian appellation for natural wines? It felt rhetorical at the time, but after giving it some thought I realised it might have legs.
Austria's Appellation Anomaly
Austria’s top wine classification is the DAC, or Districtus Austriae Controllatus. It’s the rough equivalent to France’s AOC or Italy’s DOCG. The Austrian Wine Marketing Board (AWMB) defines DACs as “regionally typical wine styles from specific quality wine regions”. They were introduced in 2001 by the board’s then-director Willi Klinger, to break Austria’s historical connection to what he described as “the Germanic system” – the categorisation of quality wine not primarily by place of origin, but by ripeness or must weight.
The idea was compelling, but its implementation proved clumsy from the outset. It didn’t help, for instance, that the most obvious candidate, the Wachau, had already rolled its own classification system by the 1980s, and showed little interest in the new system. The first dozen DACs were an uneasy mix of genuine tradition and seeming randomness. Grüner Veltliner from the vast hinterlands of Weinviertel was hardly a convincing start. It felt like a contrived attempt to try to elevate one of Austria’s most mass-produced wines.
The Kamptal and Kremstal lent a little more gravitas, as did the Leithaberg DAC for Blaufränkisch. When it comes to Burgenland, Leithaberg’s chalky slopes clearly deserve top billing. But what to do for the region’s countless other growers clustered around Lake Neusiedl? DAC Neusiedlersee, introduced in 2011 exclusively for red wines made from Zweigelt, seemed like a kludge. Clearly, the Neusiedlersee growers were keen to have their own classification, and there was no way their flatlands could compete with Blaufränkisch. But Zweigelt? Really? Yet the bureaucrats were only to happy to oblige. Another DAC box ticked.
Burgenland's Skin-Contact Surge
I’m pretty sure they made the wrong choice. The Neusiedlersee has become a hotbed of 21st century winemaking innovation, but Zweigelt certainly wasn’t the catalyst. Natural wine icons such as Claus Preisinger, Gut Oggau and Christian Tschida are now famed for their wines, their vineyard work and their minimalist cellar practices. Not only did they establish Burgenland as Austria’s wine avant-garde, they also put orange wine firmly on the map.
Nine families from the lakeside village of Gols formed the core of this movement. They included Preisinger, Nittnaus, Renner and Gerhard Pittnauer - all now well known names. Coming together in 1994 under the name Pannobile, this influential group spearheaded transitions to organic and then biodynamic farming, alongside a shift to more minimal intervention winemaking. Pittnauer first tried bottling an orange in the 1990s, long before the style had a name. “I made this type of wine because I enjoyed drinking it at home,” he told me, “but no-one understood it back then.” He abandoned the idea, only resuming in 2013 when the world had caught up. Pittnauer’s Mash Pitt perfectly defines the Neusiedlersee orange style for me: outspoken, with ripe fruit, aromatic hints and soft texture.
Claus Preisinger began using Georgian qvevris to skin ferment in 2010, gradually crystallising his crisp, high acid style around the Kalk und Kiesel blend. Gernot Heinrich, previously famed for his reds, came to orange as the perfect way to work with white grapes in 2011. Biodynamic legends Gut Oggau (Eduard Tscheppe and Stephanie Stephanie Tscheppe-Eselböck) have gradually moved to treating red and white grapes identically – everything sees light extraction, some whole bunch and some skin time.
What makes Burgenland special is not only how many growers have adopted this technique, but what they have done with it. A DAC needs to have a calling card: a clear sense of origin or point of difference. Burgenland’s now uncountable oranges tick all boxes. Where the Collio’s signature is big, structured oranges with grippy tannins and savoury flavours, Burgenland’s take is fruit-forward, juicy and soft. It’s different again to the more herby, mineral style popularised by equally pioneering Styrian growers such as Sepp Muster, Andreas Tscheppe and Werlitsch.
Burgenland’s growers also learnt that aromatic varieties sing loud and clear when they’ve been skin fermented. Joiseph, three friends who started making wine around the village of Jois in 2015, produce a textbook example: an entrancing skin-fermented Muscat Ottonel. Their Mischkultur, effectively an orange Gemischter Satz, is a great demonstration of the region’s ebullient, juicy style. “These wines show our limestone and schist soils in the perfect way,” Gernot Heinrich explained. Heinrich now makes six oranges in the Freyheit line, mostly from single varieties but headlined by the Graue Freyheit blend. Their signature encompasses delicate tannins, zesty fruit and pin-sharp acidity.
Convinced? But there’s a problem: most orange wines fail at the first hurdle when it comes to classification. The vast majority are wild fermented and bottled unfiltered. Anything from slight haziness to perceptible volatility or supposed atypical character is enough to deny a wine its prüfnummer – meaning no quality wine status, no banderole (the capsule bearing Austria’s red and white flag colours) and no possibility to be considered for DAC status. It’s caused droves of growers to abandon the system out of frustration. Foregoing mention of origin on the labels and declassifying to table wine (Weinland) feels less insulting than continued rejection by the appellation’s tasting panels.
Parchment Versus Pulp
There are signs of a change of heart. Rumour has it that “the politicians” – the Weinbauverband and the National Wine Committee - want to introduce a more permissive overarching Burgenland DAC. Their stated goal is to increase the region’s wine tourism, and that starts by making sure as many bottles as possible are eligible to show brand Burgenland on the label. Michael Wenzel, a grower from Rust who focuses on Furmint, told me that “they [the Weinbauverband] recognise that they lost too many growers over the years.”
The Weinbauverband, or winemaker’s association, is the institution that ultimately enforces Austrian wine law. Professor DI Josef Glatt has been its director since 1994. I asked him about the possibility of orange wines gaining eligibility within a DAC. He did not rule the idea out of court, saying “We are looking into how we can bring orange wines and natural wines into the quality wine system”, adding “the problem at the moment is that many of these wines are not deemed to be typical of their origin, so they are bottled without any regional information.”
He was confident a solution would be found, asserting “I am very sure that in the future we will have oranges wines in the quality wine system.” This might surprise some of the region’s winemakers, many of whom feel that battle lines between the bureaucrats and the more radical growers have only intensified in recent years. Random cellar inspections, threats of wine being declared unfit for sale (meaning enforced destruction would follow) plus constant niggles with labels that hint at vineyard or varietal names are some of the more common weapons.
Still, even if the public-facing arm of Austria’s wine bureaucracy doesn’t seem to be in sync with its more confrontational ministrations, those I spoke with sounded optimistic. The current system excludes so many globally renowned winemakers that it is arguably no longer fit for purpose. In terms of creating a new DAC, Professor Glatt outlined a deceptively simple sounding process. “It is a case of defining a specific profile that speaks of its origin, and that is recognised by consumers as quality,” he said, adding “Once that is set, if the region says yes then that’s it.” He pointed out that DACs should help customers get what they expect when they buy a bottle, adding “The problem is when the consumer buys a Grüner Veltliner that says Burgenland on the label, they are expecting this fruity style, but if they get an orange wine with a lot of tannins they might not be so happy.”
Professor Glatt had a point, but I wanted to turn it on its head. I was curious how he experienced Burgenland’s orange wines on a personal level. He expressed enthusiasm for the category, whilst admitting that “if I drink a wine on the terrace with my wife, it would be a different bottle.” He asserted that oranges are too tannic or intellectually challenging to be easy-drinking. I guess we clearly don’t drink the same wines. To me, the signature of Burgenland’s skin fermented whites is joyful, uncomplicated and refreshing.
Although my theoretical orange wine DAC isn’t an impossible construct, neither Michael Wenzel nor Gernot Heinrich felt it should be the focus. Being able to write Burgenland on the label is what matters. Doesn’t matter if it’s a DAC, doesn’t matter if it’s orange or any other colour. Their opinions are echoed by long-time Austrian wine commentator David Schildknecht, who pointed out that “If terroir engenders an identifiable “Leithaberg” [for example] character, then why wouldn’t that hold in the realm of orange wine every bit as much as in that of white or red?”
In that sense, a new overarching Burgenland DAC that permits maischevergoren as readily as it does direct press1 would be cause for celebration: something that finally allows the region’s oranges to speak of their origin not just in the glass, but also on the label.
What do you think about this subject? Would you welcome an official regional or higher classification that includes natural and/or orange wines?
The action of pressing grapes immediately after harvest and before fermentation, so that there is virtually no contact with the skins