Austria's Weinviertel: Districtus Austriae Confusius?

Kellergasse in the Weinviertel

Ask most Austrian winemakers about their country's “Appellation Controlée”-like DAC regulations and you'll be lucky if you get so much as a luke-warm response. Few are comfortable with the fragmentation, label confusion and lack of consumer recognition that the nine regional DACs have as their current legacy.

Austrian wine marketing board head honcho Willi Klinger is adamant that Austria needs to get beyond the restrictions of varietal labelling – and he recounts a useful anecdote about the seemingly impressive Austrian section in a Kentucky winebar, where he found a Grüner Veltliner that on closer examination of the back label turned out to be Hungarian.

Whatever the potential pitfalls, single varietal wines still form the core of most Austrian wine brands. Even the large North Easterly Weinviertel region, home to the first DAC created in 2002, seems to struggle with the adaption to Romanic or origin-lead labelling – versus so called “Germanic” labelling,…