Risk and Reward in Austria’s Warming Wachau

In an age defined by climate emergency, can winegrowers in Austria’s warming Wachau react and adapt fast enough to maintain the region’s historic pole position?
In an age defined by climate emergency, can winegrowers in Austria’s warming Wachau react and adapt fast enough to maintain the region’s historic pole position?
Originally trained as a musician, Simon worked variously as a sound engineer, IT consultant and alternative currency designer before wine took over his life. His writing career began in 2011 with the founding of The Morning Claret – an online wine magazine which has become one of the world’s most respected resources for natural, artisanal, organic and biodynamic wine.
His work is published in many print and online publications, including Decanter, World of Fine Wine and Noble Rot. Simon has twice won the Roederer International Wine Writing Award, most recently for his first book, Amber Revolution: How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine, published in 2018 and since translated into five languages. His second book, Foot Trodden, is a collaboration with author and photographer Ryan Opaz and celebrates artisanal winemaking in Portugal.
Simon is also active as a wine judge, translator and editor. He is a keen cook and lover of music ranging from Stockhausen to ClownC0re. He lives in Amsterdam with his partner Elisabeth.
A map of vanished Pannonian wine culture is beginning to reemerge with regional heroes such as Roland Velich and Tamás Kis leading the way.
The sun blazes. The air shimmers. On the horizon four figures throw long shadows across the dry, crumbling ground. They are headed toward a city. Doors swing open. The four step from light into dark, their throats dusty and dry. Behind a deserted bar stands a man. He pushes four full glasses over to them. Out of the glasses sloshes a wine as red as the setting sun. If you aren’t thirsty by now, you should at least be hearing the melody of a harmonica. This is how the opening scene of a revival—the Rotling revival—could begin. The four men…...
In Vulkanland Steiermark — “volcanic Styria” — the name says it all. Some 1,500 hectares of vineyard are, for the most part, sited on the slopes of extinguished volcanic cones that rise from a gently hilly landscape. Here Pannonian warmth from the east meets the Illyric balminess of the Adriatic. Among the best-known growers in Vulkanland are Weingut Neumeister, Winkler-Hermaden, and Ploder-Rosenberg. As throughout Styria, white varieties are most strongly represented, with Welschriesling and Weißburgunder (aka Pinot Blanc) statistically far in the lead, followed by Sauvignon Blanc, Müller-Thurgau, and Chardonnay; Zweigelt yields respectable red wines here as well. Traminer from…...
Trink Magazine | Austria's winegrowing region of Carnuntum has seemingly been there from the beginning with an identity forever in flux. Paula Redes Sidore explores how growers are redefining what regionality means, together.
111 Austrian Wines You Must Not Miss showcases the diversity and range of Austria’s wine landscape — beyond the ubiquitous fresh and fruity Grüner Veltliner. In it, wine journalist Luzia Schrampf and I tell 111 short, engaging stories, packed with wine knowledge and insight into what goes into growing and making a wine, as well as the many and varied ideas and philosophies of Austria’s vintners. An extraordinary number – nearly 80 per cent – of those featured in this book farm organically and more than a few produce natural wines. Here are three wines – white, orange, and red, from…...
Gerhild Burkhard, founder of the International Sparkling Festival, reveals everything you've always wanted to know about sekt (*but were afraid to ask).
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