Vienna is located where it is, because of the Romans – Vindobona. And they brought with them a valuable culture which the Viennese have embraced, and improved: wine. This is the ONLY capital city in the world with significant wine production.
Heurigen and Schrammelmusik give this city a distinctive and dark culture which add atmosphere that visitors love. The wine taverns have a strict idea of which food to accompany their wine, can only serve their own creations, they can only open in certain periods, and hang a branch outside their bar to show they are serving. Wine is a rich part of Vienna’s history, and present. Around 80% of the wine produced is white, with G’mischter Satz, a blend, being a variety the city specialises in (the name of this wine can be endlessly played with, in terms of mash-ups and tipsy conversations). But what exactly is this wine, why is it so special, and why does it feature on so few Vienna restaurant lists? Sturmzeit is a distinctive moment in our annual culinary culture, and a shock to visitors, seeing locals drinking half litres of wine.
It seems Vienna wine is mainly grown on lovely rolling hills, most famously Nussdorf and Grinzing, but Ottakring, Mauer and Favoriten also produce significant quantities of wine. Plus Stammersdorf and Strebersdorf, as we will discover.
This walk is a reminder that Vienna is a very green city, with 49% of its area being trees, parks, gardens, forests or rivers. 13% of its territory is agricultural, and this city produces more food per km2 than any other federal region of Austria. To understand how central wine is to Vienna identity, just think about a city with the same mayor for 24 years – continually re-elected, and yet for many people, whenever his name is mentioned, they will make a joke about a Spritzer – and he recently had surgery on his kidney. In that quarter century, Vienna transformed itself to become the best city in the world to live. Wine and Wien are intimately connected.
And this is a proper walk, so please bring good shoes for a longer trek. For Whoosh, the walking is more important than the drinking.
You don’t need to travel abroad to experience the joyous, colourful and distinctive.
How has Vienna’s relationship with wine evolved? The 1985 antifreeze-in-wine discovery was a turning point, pushing makers into much higher standards. It is a sweet irony that Austria has become a leader of European organic farming today largely because of the public backlash to that scandal in which cheeky winemakers used diethylene glycol (antifreeze) instead of a natural glucose sweetener on their grapes, to cut costs. And even better, the scandal emerged when an Austrian producer tried to claim a tax rebate on the stuff he’d been blending into his wines.
Descriptions of wine can be both poetic and ridiculous. We will discuss a few favourites from the British press on our walk: vigorous, cheeky, sensuous, racy, feminine, rugged yet dainty, farmyard, goaty, seductive, depth, curious, complex, rounded, bright, wow factor, whoosh, full-on, Brad Pitt sort of vintage, oomph, a slight hum in the mouth.
He promises to drink a glass in every Heurigen, so you may hear some songs by the end! It will be loud. And joyous.
Singles specially welcome on this walk.
