D3: Germany vs. Austria

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of German & Austrian Wine You know, if you look at the old wine ledgers and the restaurant menus from those grand hotels back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there is this one detail that almost always shocks modern wine lovers. Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. I mean, it completely upends all our modern assumptions about, you know, the hierarchy of global wine luxury. Speaker 1 Right, because top German rieslings weren't just expensive, they were commanding prices equal to and sometimes even higher than first growth Bordeaux. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's wild to think about. Speaker 1 We were talking about the absolute pinnacle of prestige, like people are paying astronomical sums for these. Speaker 2 Bottles, they really were. And yet, if we Fast forward just well a few decades to the 1970s and 80s, both Germany and Austria had undergone this massive identity crisis. Speaker 1 Total collapse of that prestige. Speaker 2 Exactly. They became globally synonymous with something entirely different, which was basically inexpensive medium sweet bulk wines. You had Germany pumping out Lee Promilsch and export brands like Blue None. Speaker 1 Oh, blue none, right? Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, and that accounted for around 60% of all German wine exports at one point. I mean, it was a dramatic fall from grace, so. Speaker 1 How do you go from rivaling Chateau Lafitte to filling supermarket bottom shelves and then, as we are seeing today, clawing your way back to producing some of the most profound terroir driven wines in the world? Speaker 2 That is the $1,000,000 question. Speaker 1 Welcome to the Deep Dive for you, our listener, diving deep into mastering the complex and deeply intertwined wine landscapes of Germany and Austria. This is our mission today as AWS set Diploma D3 student. You need to know exactly how this happened. Speaker 2 Because it really is a story of a fierce, quality driven renaissance. To understand modern German and Austrian wine, you have to realize that both nations have dramatically pivoted over the last few decades. Speaker 1 They've shifted heavily toward dry styles, right? Like truck and wines. Speaker 2 Heavily, they've completely overhauled their legal labeling to focus on geographical terroir rather than just, you know, sugar content. And they are producing world class red wines now that catch a lot of people off guard. Managing Germany's Slopes and Austria's Climates Yeah, the red wines are a huge blind spot for a lot of people, but to understand how these countries recover their quality, we really have to look at the sheer extremity of where these vines are actually growing, because ripening a grapier is fundamentally a matter of survival. Speaker 2 It's life or death for the vine. We are talking about very cool continental climates in Germany, the main wine regions, with the exception of Baden down in the South. They sit around 49 to 50° N latitude. Speaker 1 Which is crazy. Speaker 2 It is the extreme northern edge of global viticulture. At that latitude, site selection isn't just about coaxing out a slightly better flavor profile from the grape. It is the literal difference between a grape actually ripening or remaining completely green, hard and overly acidic. Speaker 1 Just totally undrinkable. Speaker 2 Right, And this is where the rivers become critical survival mechanisms. Most of Germany's top vineyards are situated along the River Rhine and its tributaries, like the Mosul. Speaker 1 Which act like giant batteries, right? Speaker 2 Essentially, yeah. These bodies of Water Act as massive heat reservoirs, moderating the temperature to extend that long autumn growing season, and they mitigate the very real risk of lethal spring frost. Speaker 1 I always like to think of the best German hillside vineyards as like perfectly angled solar panels. You have these incredibly steep S facing slopes overlooking the rivers. The slopes physically angle the vines to catch every possible ray of that weak northern sun. Speaker 2 That's a spot on analogy. Speaker 1 And then you have the river acting as a giant mirror, just bouncing sunlight back up onto those panels. Add in the soils like the dark colored slate in the Mosul in the R, which absorb heat during the day and act as radiators at night in this incredible micromachinery keeping the vines alive. Speaker 2 The sheer physics of it is remarkable and honestly, the steepness cannot be overstated. In the Mosul, some of these gradients reach 70%. Speaker 1 Wow, 70. Speaker 2 Yeah, workers actually have to use winches and pulley systems just to get up and down the vineyard rows that. Speaker 1 Sounds terrifying. Speaker 2 It's incredibly dangerous work. Now contrast that geographic necessity with Austria. Austria does rely as heavily on the river Canyon model because its geography dictates a completely different set of challenges. Speaker 1 Right, because the Alps basically wipe out the entire western half of the country for commercial viticulture. Speaker 2 They do, yeah. But as those mountains flatten out toward the east into the Pannonian Plain, you get this fascinating climatic crossroads. Austria is essentially being pulled in three different climatic directions at once. OK. Speaker 1 Break that down for me. Speaker 2 So in the north, in regions like the vine Vertel, you have cool northerly winds sweeping down, which preserve high acidity and drive those peppery green aromatics in the white wines. Speaker 1 But then you look E toward Bergenland, near the Hungarian border, and the environment changes completely. Speaker 2 Totally. You have the warm Pannonian air flowing in from the east, which brings enough heat to reliably ripen black grape varieties. And down in the South, in Staremark, warmer, more humid influences are creeping up from the Adriatic Sea. Speaker 1 So the way these two countries manage their respective extreme geographies is quite different. I mean in Germany, to deal with the staggering cost of farming on those steep slopes and fragmented plots, the government initiated a massive mid 20th century program called Flurbarinegum. Speaker 2 Right, the great consolidation. Speaker 1 Yeah, they literally reshaped the landscape, consolidating tiny, fragmented vineyards, bulldozing access roads. The goal was to allow for mechanization, right? So tractors could actually get in there. Speaker 2 Yes, and without flurbarinegum, many of these historic vineyards would have simply been abandoned. They were economically unviable to farm by hand in the modern era. They had to prioritize efficiency just to survive that bulk wine era. Speaker 1 But Austria took a totally different path. In its most famous region, the watch ow along the Danube, They didn't bulldoze for tractors at all. Speaker 2 No, they fiercely protected it. Speaker 1 They maintain their ancient hand built stone terraces. Those stones retain heat wonderfully for the vines, but it means literally everything, pruning, canopy management, harvesting at all has to be done by hand. Speaker 2 And the financial cost of that is staggering. The sources indicate that farming those Watch out terraces takes three to five times as many labor hours as farming vines on flatlands. Speaker 1 Three to five times. Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, and Red Wine Powerhouses That's incredible. Speaker 2 It is a massive physical and financial commitment to the site, which brings us to a really crucial concept for your exam, the grapes themselves. Because ripening is so marginal and difficult in these climates, both nations historically had to engineer solutions. Speaker 1 Enter the laboratory crosses. Speaker 2 Exactly. It led to a fascinating mix of ancient noble varieties and these modern lab crosses. Speaker 1 OK, here's where I need to play devil's advocate for a second right? If Riesling is the undisputed king of Germany and Grunerveltliner is the absolute star of Austria, why did the German Wine Institute's spend decades in the mid 20th century inventing so many laboratory crossings? Speaker 2 It seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? Right. Speaker 1 If you already have the best grapes, why spend millions of venting inferior ones? Speaker 2 That all comes down to the quest for must wait. You see, the 1971 German wine law classified quality based almost entirely on the sugar level, the must wait of the grapes at harvest. The sweeter the grape, the higher the quality category. OK, now Riesling is a late ripening grape in a cool rainy vintage. It might not achieve the legal sugar minimums, leaving the winemaker with a crop they legally couldn't sell as quality wine. Speaker 1 So the lab crosses were basically an insurance policy against the bad climate. Speaker 2 Exactly Institute's bread crosses like Miller Thurgow, which was specifically engineered to riken earlier than Riesling and produce high yields of sugary grapes in almost any condition. Speaker 1 Guaranteeing sugar. Speaker 2 Right. It guaranteed A crop that met the legal requirements for wine even in a terrible vintage. Yeah, that is how Miller Thurgow became the high yielding backbone of Liebfromilsch. Speaker 1 But the trade off is massive. Obviously. Miller Thurgow has lower acidity and significantly less aromatic complexity than Riesling. It gets the sugar, but it loses the soul, so to speak. Speaker 2 Beautifully put. It loses the soul. Speaker 1 Let's focus on the true white wine powerhouses driving the Renaissance today. For Germany, it's obviously Riesling. It accounts for nearly 1/4 of all plantings and it's incredibly resilient. Speaker 2 Very resilient, It's late budding, which means it avoids spring frosts thanks to its thick wood, and crucially, it retains piercingly high acidity even when the grapes are fully ripe. Speaker 1 Which is the secret weapon for sweet wines? Speaker 2 Absolutely. That acid is the structural spine that lets sweet German Riesling age for decades, sometimes centuries, without becoming cloying or syrupy. Speaker 1 Now in Austria, the undisputed champion is Grunerveltliner, making up a third of all plantings there. But it is a completely different beast than Riesling. Speaker 2 Oh, completely. While Riesling can thrive in this thin, dry, Stony soils we talked about on the steep slopes, Grunervelt Liner is incredibly thirsty. It needs water to perform well. Speaker 1 Which explains where it's planted. Speaker 2 Right. This is why you see it thriving in Lycos soils. Lycus is a fine powdery windblown silt that acts like a geological sponge. It holds onto water reserve preserves through the dry summer months, basically feeding those thirsty gruner vines. Speaker 1 And the flavor profile of Gruner is so distinct. I mean, it's unmistakable and a blind tasting it. Speaker 2 Really is chemically The skins of Gruner Veltliner contain a compound called rotundone. Speaker 1 Wait, rotundone? Is that what gives it that signature white pepper snap? Speaker 2 That's the one. It is the exact same aromatic compound found in actual white pepper, and it gives classic Austrian gruner that spicy celery salt savory edge. Speaker 1 I love that celery salt. Note now Austria also relies heavily on another white grape, Welsh Griesling. And we should clarify immediately for anyone taking the exam, Welsh Riesling is not related to Riesling at all. Speaker 2 Not even a little bit. Speaker 1 Right. It's high in acid and aromatically quite neutral On its own. It makes simple, crisp everyday wines. But because it has very thin skins, it is an absolute superstar for noble rot, the petritis fungus that dehydrates grapes for sweet wine. We will get into exactly how that happens when we talk about the Bergenland region later. Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a magical process. But we also have to highlight the massive rise of red wines. For a long time, the global market thought of these as exclusively white wine nations, but in Germany today, black grapes now make up 32% of plantings. Spetbergunder, which is the German name for Pinot Noir, has almost treble. Speaker 1 Treble. That's huge. Speaker 2 It is thriving. It's producing wines with red Berry fruit, elegant tannins and these complex, earthy notes, particularly in the warmer southern region of Baden. Speaker 1 Austria has its own unique red identity too, driven mostly by swigeled. This is actually a cross developed in Austria between two other black grapes, Saint-laurent and below Frankish. Speaker 2 Right. Doctor Swigel invented it, Yeah. Speaker 1 It's incredibly vigorous, It ripens early and avoids frost. You get these lovely deep colored wines with soft tannins and sour cherry flavors. But it requires intense vineyard management, doesn't it? Speaker 2 It does if the wine maker doesn't manage the canopy carefully. The vine suffers from potassium deficiency and that causes the grapes to basically wither on the vine before they even have a chance to ripen. Speaker 1 A total disaster for the eel. Speaker 2 Exactly. And there's Blau Frankish itself. It needs a lot of heat to ripen fully, which is why it's mostly found in the warm Bergen land region down near the Hungarian border. Speaker 1 Where that Pannonian air comes in, yes. Speaker 2 It has thick skins, making it resistant to rot, and produces deeply colored, highly tannic, age worthy wines with intense black fruit and peppery spice flavors. It's serious wine. Prädikatssystem, VDP, and Terroir's Triumph So because ripening was such a precarious life or death struggle for so long in these regions, wine makers needed a concrete way to prove to buyers that their grapes actually achieved ripeness. That survival instinct is what birthed the infamous 1971 German wine law. Speaker 2 The law that changed everything. Speaker 1 Right, which brings us to decoding the legal structures of these countries. This is where the transition from bulk wine to premium quality is most visible. And for your exam, it's vital to see how Germany and Austria are actively diverging and how they classify their best wines today. Speaker 2 Let's start with Germany's Preti Katz system, born from that 1971 law. It is a hierarchy based strictly on the must weight or sugar density of the grapes at harvest. Speaker 1 At the bottom you have Deutsche Vine, then Land vine, above that is Colitatz vine, which must come from one of 13 designated regions, and at the very top is Preti Katz vine. Speaker 2 And the defining rule for Preti Katz vine, the thing you absolutely must remember, is that no enrichment, meaning no adding sugar to the grape, must before fermentation is allowed. Speaker 1 No capitalization. Speaker 2 Right. The sweetness has to come entirely from the sun. The latter goes up in concentration. Cabinet Spetley's, Osley's Beery, No sleeves. Eyes, Wine and Truck and beer. No sleeves or TBA. Speaker 1 But quality minded producers realized pretty quickly that classifying a wine solely by how much sugar the grapes had was deeply flawed. I mean, it treats a flat, fertile valley floor exactly the same as a steep ancient slate terrace, as long as the sugar levels in the VAT match. Speaker 2 It completely ignores the soil, the sight, the terroir. It's just bad science for quality wine. Speaker 1 So an elite group of producers, the VDP, the Verban Deutscher, Predicates, Fine Gooder, staged a kind of rebellion. They created their own class application system outside the 1971 law, modeled directly on the terroir focus system of Burgundy. Speaker 2 They spent years mapping the best individual vineyards. The VDP pyramid is fundamental to modern German wine. Speaker 1 Walk us through that pyramid. Speaker 2 Sure. At the base you have goods fine essentially a regional estate wine, then Ortswein which is a village level wine, then airstilage which translates to premier crew and at the absolute peak gross large the gland crew sites. Speaker 1 And the VDP enforces incredibly strict rules to ensure quality far beyond what the national law requires. Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. Well, the standard German law might allow a massive 105 hectoliters of wine per hectare for a regular Qualitex vine. The VDP caps gross lodge yields at just 50 hectoliters per hectare. Speaker 1 Half the. Speaker 2 Yield less than half. They force the vine to concentrate its energy, and if a gross lodge wine is fermented completely dry, it earns the prestigious title of Gross Sisqevex or GG. You'll see that embossed right on the bottle. Speaker 1 What's really fascinating is that the revised 2020 one German wine law is now formally adopting a very similar geographic hierarchy. It is a monumental shift, proving that the terroir model has finally won out over the pure sugar model. Speaker 2 It's a huge victory for quality. Regional Typicity and the Cabinet Classification Trap But Germany's historical obsession with sugar didn't happen in a vacuum. Austria adopted those exact same German predicate terms, Cabinet Spetley's, all Swissly's, and this creates a massive legal distinction that catches almost everyone off guard in the exam. Speaker 2 Listeners, pay attention here. It is a critical difference. In Germany, cabinet is the first rung of the prestigious predicate spine ladder, right? In Austria, cabinet is not a predicate spine. Speaker 1 Wait, really? So it's legally different. Speaker 2 Entirely. In Austria, a cabinet is merely a subset of standard qualitat spine cannot be capitalized and it has a maximum alcohol limit, but it does not sit in the top predicate tier. It is a huge trap for students. Speaker 1 Wow. OK, lock that in your notes. Beyond that trap, Austria has dramatically pivoted away from the Germanic must wait system entirely. They are moving toward the Romantic or French Appalachian system. They call it the dacc districtis Austria controllitis. Speaker 2 The DC system is all about promoting regional typicity. Let's pause on the dank row for a second, because the pasting panel aspect is extremely rigorous. Speaker 1 Oh yeah, the tasting panels are brutal. Speaker 2 If a wine says vine virtual D ace on the label, it isn't just a geographic indicator. It legally must be made from Gruner veldt liner. Furthermore, it must pass a blind tasting panel of experts to prove it actually tastes like a classic vine. Virtual greener. Speaker 1 So it must have that peppery, crisp profile with no obvious oak flavor. Speaker 2 Exactly. It's a strict gatekeeper. If a producer grows a beautiful, high quality Riesling in the vine rutile, they cannot use the prestigious diag's name because Riesling isn't the historic signature of that specific region. Speaker 1 They have to label it under the broader generic regional name Nedrusreich. Speaker 2 Right, which carries less prestige. And just like Germany's VDP, Austria has independent associations driving terroir classification too. The OTW or Astaraksha traditions. Wangreuter has been classifying specific historic vineyards in regions like Comptol and Kremstall. Speaker 1 They designate the best sites as airstilage. Speaker 2 Right, yes. And they put a special one OTW logo on the dry wines from those sites. Wachau, Mosel, Rheingau, and Rheinhessen Contrasts Now, the ultimate test of all these evolving laws and engineered grapes is how they play out on the ground in specific regions. Let's look at the watch out. That incredibly steep terraced region along the Danube in Austria. They just became a desi recently in 2020, but traditionally they rely on a powerful regional association called Vineo. Watch out. Speaker 2 Vinue Achara created their own trademarked classification specifically for dry white wines based entirely on alcohol content. In a cool climate, alcohol is a very reliable proxy for how ripe the grapes got on those stone terraces. Speaker 1 So what are the tiers? Speaker 2 The lightest style is Steinfetter, which maxes out at 11.5% alcohol. It's delicate, fresh and very fruity. Speaker 1 The middle tier is Fetishfield, right? Sitting between 11.5% and 12.5%. Speaker 2 Correct, and the top tier is Smiragd. These require a minimum of 12.5% alcohol. Because they need such heavily ripened grapes, Smurge wines are highly concentrated, full bodied, often with hints of petritis, and they can age for decades. Speaker 1 Now contrast those dry, mineral driven terraces of the wash out with Austria's sweet wine capital in the East Bergenland, specifically around the new Seedler Sea. I love this region because the lake acts as a literal environmental machine that does one thing perfectly. It generates noble rot. Speaker 2 It is nature's perfect betratus factory. The new Siedler Sea is a vast, incredibly shallow lake. Because it's so shallow, the summer sun heats the water up to a bath like 30°C. Speaker 1 That is incredibly warm for a lake. Speaker 2 It is. As autumn approaches, the ambient air temperature drops significantly, but that shallow lake stays exceptionally warm. Speaker 1 And this massive temperature differential creates dense, thick morning fog that rolls off the lake and completely blankets the surrounding vineyards. That fog is the perfect incubator for the botritis fungus to flourish and puncture the grape skins. Speaker 2 But here's the catch. If the fog just sat there all day, the vines would develop Gray rot. Speaker 1 Which ruins the crop, right? Makes the wine taste like wet cardboard. Speaker 2 Exactly. So what saves the vintage? The warm afternoon Pannonian sun burns off the fog. It dries the grapes out completely. Because the fungus punctured the skins in the morning. The water inside the grape evaporates in the afternoon sun, intensely concentrating the sugars, acids and flavors. Speaker 1 And the cycle of morning fog and afternoon sun happens consistently, day after day, vintage after vintage. Speaker 2 It's clockwork. Remember that thin skinned Welsh Riesling grape we mentioned earlier? Oh. Speaker 1 Right, the neutral 1. Speaker 2 This is it's absolute perfect environment. It gets hit by petritis, the water evaporates and producers harvest these highly shriveled Raisin like grapes to make profound truck and beer in the sleeves or TBA sweet wines. Speaker 1 And right across the lake in the historic town of Rust, they make a specific, highly prized style of this Batri ties wine called Ruster Osbrook. Speaker 2 You see a similar contrast in environmental mechanisms when you look at Germany's quality hubs too. When you put the Mosul up against the Rangau, you get 2 completely different expressions of raisling. Speaker 1 In the Mosul, you have those terrifyingly steep, dark slate slopes. The overall climate is cooler, so the Rieslings here are often the most delicate, floral and low alcohol in the world. Speaker 2 You get these intense aromas of green apple, Jasmine and whetstone. Speaker 1 This is the traditional heartland of the off dry predicate styles cabinet and Spetley's, where a touch of unfermented residual sugar perfectly balances the piercing electric. Speaker 2 Acidity. But travel South Down the river to the Rheingau and the environment shifts. The river Rhine widens significantly here. The vineyards are positioned on the north bank facing S, but they are generally on gentler mid slope sites rather than those sheer Mosel cliffs. Speaker 1 The soils are deeper too, with more loam and lowest alongside the slate. It's a slightly warmer environment with less humidity from the river. Speaker 2 Because of that added warmth and deeper soil, the Rango has historically driven a drier, fuller bodied style of rising. You get more ripe Peach and apricot notes with a bit more weight on the palate. Speaker 1 It makes total sense. The Geisenheim, the world famous wine Research Institute that engineered so many of those viticultural solutions, is located right here in the Rheingau. Speaker 2 It's the intellectual heart of German wine. And finally, we have to mention Rheinhessen, Journey's largest wine producing region. It has a fascinating dual identity. Speaker 1 The warm, fertile flat valley floors were historically the engine room for the high volume, inexpensive bulk wines, right? The infamous Liebfrom milch literally originated in the city of Worms in southern Reinissen. Speaker 2 It was the absolute epicenter of the 1980s identity crisis, but today the Rhinhessen is arguably the most dynamic, exciting region in Germany. Speaker 1 What change? Speaker 2 A new generation of highly educated wine makers, many of them part of the Generation Riceling movement, have taken over their family estates. They are abandoning the fertile valley floors entirely. Speaker 1 Moving up into the hills. Speaker 2 Exactly. Moving up into the steeper mineral rich sites, severely restricting their yields and producing incredibly tense, high quality dry ruslings and Sput Briganders, they are turning the region's reputation completely upside down. Warming Climate and the Future of Eiswein When you pull back and look at the entirety of Germany and Austria today for your exam, you are looking at 2 distinct stories of phenomenal recovery. Their entire viticultural history is defined by their mastery of marginal, challenging climates. Speaker 2 They survived the bulk wine era and have completely shifted gears. It's a domestic shift too. Both countries have moved away from exporting cheap, sweet wines, driven largely by their own domestic consumers who overwhelmingly demand high quality dry wines and complex Reds. Speaker 1 And they realized that classifying a wine's quality simply by measuring the sugar in the grape was fundamentally insufficient for the modern world. Speaker 2 They are actively evolving their laws through the VDP in Germany and the DAC in Austria to protect, define and highlight geographical terroir over everything else. Speaker 1 It's a complete paradigm shift, but it leaves us with one final, incredibly provocative thought to Mull over. We mentioned that these are cool marginal climates. Their entire identity, the steep slopes, the solar panel angling the river, mirrors the invention of laboratory crosses, the predicate system rewarding sugar. It was all built around the fundamental existential struggle to ripen grapes. Speaker 2 But the climate data tells a completely different story now. Between the years 2000 and 2009 alone, average vineyard temperatures in Germany rose by a full degree Celsius. Speaker 1 A full degree in a decade. Speaker 2 Yes, vintage variation where grapes simply fail to ripen in a cold year is dramatically reducing the baseline is getting. Speaker 1 So if the climate continues to warm, ripening is no longer a struggle. So what happens to their viticultural identity when the core tension is gone? Speaker 2 That is the big question. Speaker 1 What happens to Eisvein, which legally requires grapes to freeze solid on the vine at -7°C, when the winters are simply no longer cold enough to freeze them? Will that legendary, razor sharp German Eisvein soon become an impossible relic of the past? Speaker 2 If the environmental machinery changes, the wines must inevitably change with it. The regions will have to adapt all over again. Speaker 1 It brings us right back to those hotel ledgers in the late 19th century. We look at those astronomical prices for German reisling with shock today. But if these regions keep pushing the absolute boundaries of dry to raw driven wines while the climate warms and the struggle fades, who knows? Maybe those first growth Bordeaux prices are coming back not for the sweet wines of the past, but for something entirely new. Something for you to think about as you continue to master these incredible landscapes. We will catch you on the next deep dive.