Our excursion group from the second and fourth semesters of the dual degree programs in Viticulture and Oenology, which traveled to Austria, started on Sunday morning on 24.07.2022 from the wine campus in the direction of Graz. In addition to wine, the excursions focused in particular on viticulture, winemaking and marketing. In addition to smaller city tours, we visited some classic wineries with typical wines, research and educational institutions as well as pioneers with extraordinary and innovative wines.
Our first stop was in Graz, from where we began our two-day tour of wineries in Styria. We visited the biodynamic Sattlerhof and the Skoff original winery with its multi-layered Sauvignon blanc wines in Gamlitz, among others, and tasted wines from the Welschriesling, Muskateller and Sauvignon blanc grape varieties alongside guided tours and exciting discussions. We also visited classic wineries such as Weingut Hiden in St. Stefan ob Stainz and Schilcherweingut Friedrich, which specializes in the Blauer Wildbacher grape variety. As was customary in Styria (in the past), the Hiden winery has a Buschenschank, where small regional dishes are served with the winery's own wine. We also visited the Silberberg state winery in Leibnitz with its traditional wine and fruit-growing school as well as a boarding school for the students and the Haidegg experimental station in Graz. We were always served lunch here after visiting the vineyards and wine cellars. In addition, we were given a very comprehensive insight into the respective experimental focuses, so that many new ideas could be taken back to Neustadt. Among other things, we were able to visit a plant with a greened under-vine area (alternative to glyphosate), the sensor room and several cross-terraced plants at Silberberg. At the experimental facility in Haidegg, the focus was on fungus-resistant grape varieties such as Souvignier gris, Cabernet blanc, Muscaris and Sauvignac.
We spent the last three days in Vienna. Here, too, there were many interesting wineries, some of which were already part of Burgenland. These included the large biodynamic Heinrich winery, which advertises entry-level wines in the natural wine sector. There was also the Gesellmann winery, which competes with French red wines with its cuvées. In the smallest Austrian wine-growing region - Carnuntum - we visited the Glatzer and Artner wineries. In addition to excellent red wines, we were presented with grape varieties typical of the region, such as yellow Muscat, Grüner Veltliner and Chardonnay, which is called Morillon here. In contrast to Styria, where winegrowers had to increasingly protect their vines against downy mildew (Peronospora) as a result of high rainfall, some of the vineyards there were already showing the first symptoms of drought stress.
Degree of the excursions was a last evening in Vienna, which ended with a classic Wiener Schnitzel.
Dipl. Ing. Sebastian Hörsch
Assistant viticulture
