The Empire Strikes Back

Making sense of the phrase Central Europe, and what it means for wine

Where is Balkan? That’s the question asked by Slovenian philosopher

Slavoj Žižek

in a now legendary clip from the 2013 documentary Balkan Spirit. His theme is the prejudice associated with this word. It’s also a reminder that many popular geographical terms are far harder to pin down than you might have thought.

I long since adopted the term Central Europe to refer to a group of wine countries that fascinate me culturally and provide much of my drinking pleasure. It’s quicker and easier than spouting off a list that includes Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia, Croatia, Serbia, Herzegovina and so on. If I want to sound a bit more pretentious I might say Mitteleuropa. Somehow that phrase transports me more readily to a coffee house in Vienna or the sea of onion domes in Belgrade.

My appreciation of Central European wines has been greatly enhanced over the last few years by the Karakterre fair, which states its focus as “organic, biodynamic, and natural wines, as well as the farming practices of Central and Eastern Europe.” With Karakterre 15 taking place in Austria this coming weekend (17-18 May), it’s a good moment to ruminate on exactly what that means.

So, where is Mitteleuropa? (Imagine Žižek spitting that phrase out with his customary zeal) If the Balkans is hard to define, Central Europe is close to impossible¹. I’ll attempt a summary, even if doing this without offending someone might be challenging.

The term seems to have crystallised in the mid-1800s, with the rise of a highly educated and industrialised society centred around modern-day Germany. If it seems purely geographical, it’s anything but. Mitteleuropa was increasingly adopted as a descriptor by countries further east of the Germanic axis, on an aspirational basis. It has ethnic overtones too, describing as it does the part of Europe where Slavic and Germanic cultures meet. And if that mix sounds familiar, that’s because it formed the underlying fabric of the former Habsburg Empire.

Two world wars rendered the term politically questionable. The advent of the cold war, and the iron curtain separating east and west, put further nails in the coffin of any idea of a united Central Europe. But the concept surfaced again in the 1990s as a positive descriptor for ex-Yugoslav nations. Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, specifically, have attached themselves to it. This has to do both with the Habsburg Empire - latterly the Austro-Hungarian Empire - of which they were an important part, and I suspect with the aspiration that both these countries share to be part of the European Union.

The official version

If you look for official definitions of Central Europe, most still cling to an older, more geographically delineated approach. Germany and Switzerland are invariably listed, sometimes with the inclusion of the Baltics. Slovenia is an edge-case, with most of the rest of the Balkans or ex-Yugoslav countries excluded.

None of this is very helpful when you look for the cultural links that bind wine countries together. It’s been a while since I had a Lithuanian wine. And Switzerland’s viticulture and geography feels more connected to France than anywhere else.

I also struggle to find parallels between Germany and the ex-Hapsburg regions. Germany has a more Northern-European winemaking tradition, focused most famously on white wine production. There is no documented tradition of skin fermenting white grapes here. It has a much longer history of bottled, quality wine than its more easterly and southerly neighbours, and a more ingrained set of wine classifications and denominations. Paradoxically, its growers have taken longer to embrace minimal intervention or natural winemaking philosophies, compared to Austria, Italy or Slovenia.

The binds of the old empire

My fascination for orange wine helped me recognise that there is a significant axis around the Northern Adriatic. These parts of Northeastern Italy (Friuli Collio and Carso, the area around Trieste) are ethnically and culturally as Slav as they are Italian.

The tradition of skin fermenting white grapes, aka making orange wines, has centuries of history on both sides of the Italo-Slovene border. Slovenia and Croatia meet in the cross-border region of Istria/Istra over a glass of Malvazija. There’ll be a pasta dish on the table.

At the other end of Slovenia, it all begins to feel more Austrian. The winemaking style changes markedly, as does the landscape and the cuisine. Just as Friuli Collio and Goriška Brda are one region split by a modern political border, so are Austrian Styria and Slovenian Štajerska. Here the preference is for lighter, fresher, mostly white wines.

I’m not sure how much I need to add about Austria. For me it is the motherlode for natural wine in this part of the world, with an extraordinary number of now globally renowned growers, not to mention Europe’s highest proportion of organic certified estates (24%). And it’s the home of biodynamic agriculture. As one of the only ex-Habsburg nations to escape communist wine production, it has retained a competitive edge despite the 1985 wine scandal (or perhaps because of it).

Here’s a little ode to Austrian (natural) wine: No Kangaroos in Austria.

Everything makes more sense when you take a look at a map of the old empire. It was well defined along cultural lines, including the Südtirol (now Italy) which is a largely-Germany speaking region that butts up to the Austrian Tirol, plus the aforementioned parts of modern-day North-East Italy.

The winemaking traditions in Slovenia and Croatia extend comfortably into Herzegovina² and Serbia too. Both were important wine producing countries during the time of the Habsburgs. Two world wars and half a century of Yugoslavia wiped out many of the reference points, and we are only just beginning to see the wine industry recover. I was excited by what I tasted from the Serbian regions Fruska Gora and Negotinska Krajina last December.

Further reading: What I learned in Serbia, Visiting Bikicki and Baša.

A natural renaissance

Travel through Austria’s Weinviertel and keep heading north into Czechia, and it feels like a continuation of the same region. Moravia’s winemaking towns and villages have small cellars lining the streets, just like the Weinviertel’s kellergasse. You’ll still find old vineyards planted to field blends, a clear demonstration that gemischtersatz³ was once popular far beyond Vienna.

Both Czechia and neighbouring Slovakia have had their work cut out to rebuild a winemaking industry that was brought to its knees by poor-quality communist-era production. But an exciting renaissance is well underway, and it is being driven by the smaller, low-intervention estates. This has resulted in the possibly unique situation where these nations’ natural winemakers have a larger global profile than their mainstream counterparts, most of whom are content to supply the domestic market.

Names such as Milan Nestarec in Moravia, or Strekov 1075 in Slovakia have put these countries on the map by showcasing their ability to produce incredible freshness and vitality. This is still a genuinely cool climate part of Europe, with an extreme continental climate.

Further reading on Slovakia: My 2023 article from World of Fine Wine.

Further reading on Czechia: Everything tagged Czechia on this site.

It’s all been a bit more complicated in Hungary. On the one hand, the famed dessert wine production in Tokaj kept it permanently on the international wine map, but on the other it rested on decaying laurels for decades after the fall of the iron curtain. Abandoned vineyards and sloppy winemaking remained common, not helped by the failure of the government to either promote or invest in the industry.

A community of natural wine growers was slow to develop here, but has now got off the ground with producers such as Peter Wetzer, Szolo, Reka Koncz and Bencze Birtok all flying the flag. Franz Weninger’s border-straddling estate in Horitschon has also set a shining example for the Sopron region.

Poland, Romania and the southern Balkans (Albania, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Bulgaria) ought to get a look in here too. I can only plead insufficient time and research - at least so far. Arguably, Moldova and Ukraine are also part of this wine diaspora.

Central Europe or the former empire?

The more I looked at the map of the Austro-Hungarian empire from its most expansive in the decade just before WWI, the more I could see that my focus isn’t Central Europe. It’s the Hapsburg Empire, a construct and an era that has permanently left its mark on wine culture across Central, Eastern, Balkan or whatever-you-want-to-call-it Europe.

It goes far deeper than wine. Visit Timișoara, capital of the western part of Romania that was also under Hapsburg rule, and you’ll be struck by the architecture. It’s easy to imagine Vienna might have looked like this before the WWII bombings. In terms of cuisine, Goulash and Strudel exist in myriad versions all across Central Europe and the Balkans. Both proliferated during the Hapsburg era, the former from Hungary and the latter from Austria.

Rebranding myself from a Central Europe specialist to an ex-Habsburg Monarchy obsessive might not be entirely palatable. But it’s the best geopolitical description of the countries that keep inspiring me to visit, research and write.

So I’m sorry Germany, it’s nothing personal. I promise I still like Riesling. You have countless champions and I don’t think you need me. Whereas much of what was once Austro-Hungary remains uncharted territory for wine lovers.

I’m on a mission to change that. Who’s with me?

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1. I recommend taking 20 minutes to read this enlightening wikipedia article.

2. Herzegovina is a largely Christian region that has always had wine production, whereas Bosnia-proper is not only mostly mountainous (no possibility to grow vines) but also far more Muslim.

3. The Austrian name for a field blend that is harvested and co-fermented. It is now a PDO wine in the Vienna wine growing region.