Ep. 1020 Map 25 Austria | Jumbo Shrimp Maps

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Mountains are a dominant feature of West and central Austria, so Viticulture is mainly clustered around the eastern end of the country. The climate is cool continental overall. But a number of influences make for more specific conditions in the different growing areas. Vineyard areas in the north are greatly influenced by the cool northerly winds. But in the south, there is a warming influence provided by the proximity of the Adriatic sea. Growing areas in the east are influenced by warm Easterly air from the Panonian plane, which allows for reliable ripening of black varieties. And in the west, vineyards can experience cool breezes that come in from the Alps. As expected, a landlocked country with a cool continental climate means that spring frosts can be a hazard. Moving on to grape varieties. Most plantings are devoted to white grape varieties. Grooner Veltliner is native to Austria and is its flagship white grape. It is also the most planted variety and if planted on fertile sites, it runs the risk of losing some of its character. But when vines are less vigorous, wine quality can be outstanding and fetch premium prices. Printer Veltliner has thick skins which can lead to a phenolic texture in the wines and also give it its thumb print, pepper characteristic. Wines are typically high in acidity with citrus and green fruit aromas, but can have pronounced intensity and stone fruit flavors with premium bottlings. Typically, gruner beltliner, is generally made in a style that highlights its vital characteristics without flavors from oak influence. Second in planting is welsh riesling, which is not actually related to riesling. Welsh Riesling has high acidity levels and somewhat neutral character. It is mostly made into a fresh crisp white style of wine, but is made into sweet, berenauchlazy or a token berenauchlazy wines, when grown in areas that are conducive to botrytis development. The high acidity balances the sweetness level and pronounced tropical and dried fruit characteristics in these sweet styles. Riesling plantings are less than five percent of total vineyard area. But are highly prized nonetheless. It can be mainly found in neater or storage in drier soils that would be unsuitable for greener belt leaner to grow well. Riesling is almost always made in a dry style with ripe stone fruit character and sometimes tropical notes. Feigelt is the most planted black variety in Austria. It is the result of a crossing between Saint Laurent and Blaufrenckish. The benefits of this crossing are that it ripens earlier. Thus allowing it to be planted widely throughout Austria. But it is also vigorous. So growers need to employ strategies that curve it from producing too much fruit. Wines tend to have medium to medium plasticity, medium tenons, and red fruit flavors. Stiles can range from fresh and fruity to more serious bottlings with fuller body and oak characteristics. La Frankish produces deeply colored wines with medium plus to high tenants, high acidity, and black fruit flavors. It is a later ripening variety, so it needs to be grown in warmer areas such as Bergland to fully ripen. Saint Claren also makes deeply colored wines and has medium tenons and red cherry fruit flavors. Austria's GI system has three levels, keeping in line with the EU model. Mine without a geographical indication is labeled fine. The next level in the pyramid is PGI wines called Landvine. With relatively smaller delimited areas and slightly stricter regulations. Only twelve percent of wine. Only twelve percent of wine production in Austria falls into the vine and landline levels of production. PDO wines are at the top level and has two subdivisions. Qualitates fine and predicates fine. Like Germany, predicates fine is considered to be the higher level. This category is also based on must weight. In other words, the level of great brightness. However, there are some key differences here in Austria. There is no cabinet level here, but there is an additional predicates vine level here in Austria called Auschwitz. Which is a very sweet TBA style of wine produced on the western shores of Noy Siedler Sea near the town of Rusta. Let's shift to the Qualitates Fine category of PTO wines. Wines within the Qualitates Fine category can be further labeled with the terms classic or reserve. These terms help the consumer to know what styles of wine to expect in the bottle. Classic is used for wines showing varietal character. While reserve label wines have later harvested grapes and later release dates, but are vinified dry. Thank you for listening to Italian wine podcast. We know there are many of you listening out there, so we just want to interrupt for a small ask. Italian wine podcast is in the running for an award, the best podcast listening platform through the podcast award the people's choice. Lister nominations is from July first to the thirty first, and we would really appreciate your vote. We are hoping our listeners will come through for us. So if you have a second and could do this small thing for us, Just head to Italian wine podcast dot com from July first to the thirty first and click the link. We thank you and back to the show. Now, let's discuss how Austria has shifted its direction in wine law to address the concept of origin. An appalachian system was introduced for Austrian and wine called regionally typical Qualitates Fine. Or DAC for short. This system departs from German wine law because it is based on origin while also promoting tipicity for that particular region. Seventeen of eighteen regions to date have signed on to the system in Austria. For a region to successfully join the DAC system, to proceed must be defined and agreed upon by the producers there. Certain styles of wines are also outlined, as well as the permitted grape varieties for that region. Once a region has been granted DAC status, wines are analyzed by a tasting panel to see if they express tipicity as determined for that region. If the wine is not typical, it is rejected. Winds that pass the criteria can use the DAC symbol and indicate the smaller region on the label. Wines outside of the DAC system are not permitted to indicate origin using these smaller regions. And it must use the corresponding larger denomination, one of those four federal states. Let's use an example to illustrate this point, a wine from Vianfertil that passes through the panel tasting and follows all the necessary regulations. Can use the DAC symbol and can write vine fertile on the label. But if that wine does not pass the requirements for tipicity and regulations, it must be labeled as the much larger Neter Osterush. In other words, non DAC wines may not use any of the DAC region names. So let's talk about the regions in Austria. Wines in the PTO category are labeled with one of the four federal states for wine growing in Austria. But like we said before, if a wine qualifies as DAC, then it would be labeled with a smaller more specific region of that DAC. So looking at a couple of these federal states, we could see that Neter Oster ish is Austria's largest grape growing region. It encompasses smaller regions along the Danube River in the warmer Penonian plain, in the large area north of Vienna. Seven of its eight smaller regions have achieved DAC status. Let's look specifically at Vajau DAC, which is located in a prime location on the north side of the Dani River. The main grapes here are greener Veltliner and resync for bottlings that often represent very good to outstanding quality. Many sites have south facing aspects that have particularly intense sunlight exposure to aid ripening. Grunar vet leaner can be fourteen percent alcohol or more given these prime sites. The best wines have long aging potential from the fruit concentration and acid structure. The largest DAC in Nidros Doresh is Vine Frittle. It focuses on Grooner Belt leaner and is known for a particularly expressive pepper characteristic and high acidity due to the cooling breezes that come from the north. Oregonland is another of the Forest Federal States. It is located on the eastern edge of Austria where the warm air from the Panonian plane creates an ideal climate for black grape production. Blau Frankish and Feigelt are the main black grapes. Making easy drinking styles as well as fuller bodied intense wines with oak characteristics. Dry white production is also important from Pinot blanc, welsh friesling, greenervel leaner, and chardonnay. Within Bergland is the Noisiedler Sea DAC, a particularly warm area situated around the Eastern Shore of Lake Noisiedler Sea. This is a large shallow lake that gets very warm in the summer heat. So warm that the water reaches thirty degrees Celsius. So in the autumn, the the lake water stays warm while the air temperature drops. This creates a fog that consistently covers the surrounding vineyards. The humidity in the fog encourages betritus to take hold on the grape skins and gradually shrivel the grapes. While Shriesling is planted in this area for betritus wine production because its thin skins make it prone to betritus. We can recall that sweet buttritus infected grapes can be made into TBA wines, the highest tier of predicates fine. So it is remarkable to have the special climatic conditions happen consistently each year to make TBA wine. 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