Achleiten Vineyard, Wachau

“It hasn’t always been this way.” And it may not stay this way, either”, Emmerich Knoll answers gravely, with an emphatic pause between sentences. We’re driving along the north bank of the Danube River a couple of hours west of Vienna. Above us, vines cling to breathtakingly steep slopes along narrow terraces that follow the sinuous contours of the hills overlooking the river. It’s only March, but the spring has been warm and there’s already a few inches of green pushing out from the arms of these short, rugged vines, leaving the meter-high, dry stone walls that contain the terraces visible from the road in the oblique afternoon sunlight.

I had just remarked to Herr Knoll, a leading Wachau grower, on the extraordinary effort required to farm these sites, where everything must be done by hand, shuddering at the cost of production. Knoll still remembers the time when his grandparents and parents sold their entire production through the extended family’s local tavern and inn, the Loibnerhof across the street from the winery, in unlabeled bottles.

Times have certainly changed. The top wines of the Wachau, Austria’s most revered white wine region, today command prices that begin to make the effort financially worthwhile (and the Loibnerhof isnow one of the region’s top restaurants serving traditional cuisine, with a Gault Millau toque). But, as Knoll has pointed out, the high prices now commanded for these singular wines are relatively recent, and the future is never guaranteed.

You needn’t travel too far back in time to reach an era when the very existence of these vineyards was in peril. In fact, Vinea Wachau Nobilis Districtus, a local growers’ association of which Knoll is the current chairman, was created in 1983 essentially with the aim of ensuring the future survival of these challenging terraced vineyards. Founders Josef Jamek, Franz Hirztberger Sr., Wilhelm Schwengler, and Franz Prager recognized the precarious existence of such visually arresting but frighteningly expensive to farm sites. It’s plain to see why they were concerned. In an era when competition was based principally on quantity and price, this demanding region, where costs are high and yields are low, would never be able to compete with other parts of Austria, not to mention the rest of the world.

Hirtzberger’s Legendary Singerriedel Vineyard

The founders of Vinea Wachau believed that by establishing an uncompromising production code they could raise and maintain the quality mean, and thus bring greater respect for Wachau wines. Prices, too, would logically follow suit. Membership was, as it still is, open to all Wachau winegrowers, provided they agree to follow the rather strict Codex Wachau, which outlines wine production. Among the main principles of the Codex is adherence to purity: no adulteration is permitted (chaptalization, concentration, fractionation, or aromatization, including obvious oak), in addition to guaranteeing origin (no grapes from other regions are even permitted in the cellar).

To start, 24 wineries took up the gambit and joined the association. Now Vinea Wachau counts nearly 200 members. And the initial aims have largely been met. The Wachau remains the most famous Austrian appellation, an official DAC (Districtus Austriae Contollatus) since 2020, and enjoys sustainable prices that far exceed the national average.

The future of this remarkable physical landscape has also been given institutional protection. The entire Wachau region was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, recognizing that the “architecture, the human settlements, and the agricultural use of the land in the Wachau vividly illustrate a basically medieval landscape which has evolved organically and harmoniously over time”, according to the official inscription.

1000 year-old cellars and ancient casks at Weingut Nikolaihof

Medieval is accurate. Terraces have existed in the Wachau for over a thousand years, first carved out of the hillsides for the cultivation of vines by monks of Bavarian monastic orders sometime around the 9th century (even if the Romans before them had planted grapes and made wine). The terraces were necessary both to prevent erosion in an area that sees substantial rainfall, as well moderate the steep pitch of the slopes, the steepest of which would set even the hearts of extreme skiers racing. These slopes are where most of the Wachau’s top wines originate, benefiting from better damage and warmer nights, less vigorous soils and less frost damage and botrytis. But it’s fair to say that if these terraces hadn’t already been built, no right-minded businessperson would ever even conceive of creating them today.

Looking up the Spitz Valley from the Singerriedel vineyard, with the Tausendeimerberg vineyard on the left

Spitz Valley-based winegrower Peter Veyder-Malberg counts three to five times more man-hours per year to farm his terraced vineyards, compared to those in the flatter sites closer to the Danube (and another five to seven times more to farm them organically/biodynamically, as he does). “Farming the terraces is more like gardening on a large scale”, he says. But although far more laborious, “at least you can treat each row, each vine, differently. It’s a manual form of ultra-precision viticulture.”

As for Rudi Pichler, he spends up to 2000 hours a year to farm his particularly steep and stony parcel of the famed Achleiten vineyard in Weissenkirchen, with a slope gradient up to 77%, and just a few hundred hours in his flatter Kirchweg vineyard with a maximum slope of 4%. Grape prices naturally reflect these differences in labour cost. Erich Pichler-Krutzler pays five to six euros for a kilogram of grapes from the precipitous Kellerberg in Dürnstein (65% slope), and just 1.5 euros for grapes from the Fraunengärten just a little further upriver (2%).

Flat vs. Terrassed Vineyards, Wachau

The additional cost is not simply related to the extra time required to spray, weed or harvest by hand. Part of those work-hours is devoted to maintaining the dry stone retaining walls, a feat of craftsmanship in itself. Being mortar-free, the walls are elastic and can disburse water pressure evenly, allowing it to drain through small gaps in the stones and prevent erosion. As a side benefit, the stones also moderate the microclimate of adjacent vines, absorbing and releasing heat, providing an extra nudge of ripeness, as well as offering refuge for insects and other creatures like the emerald-coloured (“smaradg”) lizards often seen sunbathing on the rocks during the growing season.

Looking West in the Danube Valley, from Kollmitz to the Kollmütz vineyards

Yet the walls’ elasticity also means that they need occasional repairs, an expensive necessity. Roman Horváth, managing director of Domain Wachau, the cooperative that controls nearly a third of the Wachau’s vineyards, calculates over 520 euros (c. $750 CAD) to repair a single square meter. Considering that there are several thousand kilometers of walls in the region, the price of this stony artwork rises into the millions of euros, a cost not on the balance sheet in so many other regions. And to make matters worse, the skilled labour capable of making the repairs is in short supply. Convincing anyone to work in these vineyards is a growing challenge.

Looking West to the village of Weissenkirchen from the Achleiten Vineyard

Most of the region’s plantings date from shortly after WWII, meaning the average age of vines is quite high. It was about this time that the Wachau’s two main grapes, grüner veltliner and riesling, began to dominate vineyards. Prior to that most vineyards were field blends, as they were elsewhere in Austria and Europe. Small quantities of over a dozen other varieties are still grown, but riesling and grüner are the region’s twin calling cards.

That grüner is important will not surprise anyone; it leads acreage in all of Lower Austria, while riesling occupies just 4% of the total. But fully one-quarter of Wachau vineyards are devoted to riesling, the highest percentage of any Austrian region. Even more tellingly, the leading family estates often dedicate a much higher percentage of their acreage to riesling. Nearly half of production at Knoll, for example, is riesling, while at Präger it accounts for 60% of production. “In the Wachau, riesling is at least as important as grüner veltliner”, says Horváth.

Riesling is planted almost exclusively in the higher, drier, primary rock terraced sites. The variety holds more potassium and calcium in its leaves than grüner veltliner, which enables it to withstand water stress more ably. It also delivers lower yields than grüner on average. “Riesling’s intrinsic tendency is to produce quality”, says Horváth, “while grüner needs more coaxing and care”.

The net result is that Wachau rieslings are among the finest examples on earth. Unlike Alsatian and German versions (and anywhere else, for that matter,) they are reliably dry, unless otherwise labeled. They also fall on the more powerful, full-bodied end of the varietal spectrum, especially wines labelled Smaragd, after those resident emerald lizards, the ripest of all Wachau rieslings with 13-13.5% alcohol. The examples from the stonier, higher elevation vineyards are tight, racy, extremely stony, quivering with tension and energy. The lower vineyards and deeper loess sites make for slightly rounder, riper, softer rieslings, yet still tension-filled.

Grüner is a more vigorous variety, and importantly, is more sensitive to drought. It reaches its maximum expression mainly on the lower terraces and riverside vineyards, with their deeper, more water retentive, loess and flood sediment-influenced soils, also richer in calcium carbonate and with higher in pH. Grüner also dominates on the south bank for these reasons.

Stylistically, Grüners, too, follow the same pattern as riesling. Those from the heavy loess sites are among Austria’s most powerful, rich and full-bodied versions. Wines with over 15% alcohol were once commonplace, though lately there’s been a return to less opulent, baroque styles. The more rare examples from primary rock sites show more delineation and acid character, proving that grüner can also translate vineyard character, if not quite as transparently as riesling.

In any case, consider this unique and beautiful landscape the next time you’re sipping wine from one of these great vineyards. For me, it’s a particularly bittersweet sensation to take pleasure from another’s grinding efforts, and I’ll gladly pay the price to experience them. The wines, after all, are worth it. Besides, if we don’t, they may just disappear. That would be a tragedy.

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