Is Austria set up for fine wine success?

How can Austria’s producers position themselves on the global fine wine stage? Gabriel Stone visits the Alpine resort of Lech to find out.

“To define is to limit,” posited Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Despite this warning, the dying days of 2023 saw an international wine trade panel take to the stage in front of an equally cosmopolitan audience in the Austrian ski resort and major gastronomic hub of Lech to attempt just that. What is fine wine? Who gets to join the club, and how? And, given the event’s location, what does all this mean for Austrian wine’s ability to position itself in the highest echelons of wine society?Definitions of fine wine ranged from the most simplistic criterion of price, right through to the detailed, five-point description that think tank Areni Global has dedicated itself to refining, in consultation with the trade and consumers, since 2017.

Perhaps the most succinct definition came from Adrian Garforth MW, COO of 67 Pall Mall, the rapidly expanding private members’ wine club with outlets in London, Verbier, Singapore, Beaune, Bordeaux and, as of 2025, Melbourne.

“It’s a wine that commands a price premium within its region and, over a period of time, it will always be above its peers,” he suggested. As for whether it was helpful to pursue such a definition and place so much emphasis upon it, Garforth expressed his doubts.

“The term ‘fine wine’ is actually quite divisive,” he argued. “There is a small section of the market that are trophy hunters – but for most people they just want a nice glass of wine.” For Garforth, it is this latter quest that lies at the heart of the 67 Pall Mall ethos.

Roman Horvath MW, winery director at respected Austrian producer Domäne Wachau, shared this wariness. “The term ‘fine wine’ is excluding a huge amount of the population who want to enjoy wine,” he maintained. Instead, Horvath outlined a rather less ego-laden approach at Domäne Wachau, saying: “We try to produce good wine from good places and hope to find the right consumer for it.”

Breathless pace

If there’s one corner of the world that has really embraced the fine wine scene over the last couple of decades, it’s Asia. What’s more, during that short timeframe Asian consumers’ definition of fine wine has evolved at a breathless pace. Simon Tam, founder of Aeos Auctions in Hong Kong and former head of wine for Christie’s Asia, has not just observed this development at first hand, but played a role in its direction.

At the heart of the fine wine scene, whether in Beijing or Bangkok, Tam stressed the importance of “giving face”, using wine as a tool to “pay homage to your host and put them up on a pedestal”.

With this comes a less overt “constant jostling for power. It’s really subtle, but it’s what drives the wine market all over Asia”, he emphasised.

That driver remains unchanged but, Tam explained, the way in which Asian consumers express it has largely moved on from the early days of trumping each other with revered vintages from Bordeaux First Growths.

“We have evolved to know that knowledge is supreme,” he observed. “So it becomes: ‘have you tried this before?’” It’s a mindset that opens the door to a far broader definition of fine wine, with huge opportunities for any producer with the know-how and patience to build their reputation in the right way.”

When it comes to Austrian wine, Tam acknowledged, “it’s very early days,” with only a handful of names such as Domäne Wachau, Schloss Gobelsburg and FX Pichler really gaining meaningful visibility. However, he added: “The thing Austria is doing very well at the moment is to come in with its wine ace, Grüner Veltliner. So many countries around the world think that more is better – it’s not.”

It also helps that Grüner Veltliner has a particularly strong affinity – “much better than Chardonnay,” argues Tam – with Asian cuisine. “That’s a conversation that can really go far,” he suggested.

Despite the temptations of Asia, many Austrian producers understandably prefer to focus on markets closer to home. Nor is the opportunity limited to the country’s more famous white styles.

Germany may be overwhelmingly the largest export market for Austrian wine, but it is the country’s number two market, Switzerland, that drinks a proportionately higher volume of Austrian reds.

“The Swiss are particularly focused on the slightly darker, oakier styles,” suggested Marc Almert, head sommelier at Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich. That plays into the hands of Burgenland, which alongside the white wine-dominant Wachau and Kremstal, Almert cited as being “the three most important regions” in his market.

One vital contact for any producer with international fine wine ambitions to nurture is Arnt Egil Nordlien, fine wine buyer for Vinmonopolet in Norway.

In this country’s monopoly system, his selection for the retailer ’s 12 specialist fine wine stores is key to success in the Norwegian market at higher quality levels. Understandably, competition is tough. “I buy about 2% of the wine I’m offered, so about 1,400 wines a year,” revealed Nordlien. “If I don’t buy a wine, it’s not because it’s not good.”

While there’s no fail-safe recipe for success, a dash of humility certainly helps. “I get offers from new producers, perhaps in a well-known wine region, so they want to charge €500,” said Nordlien. “I always turn them down.”

In contrast, he cited a successful longterm relationship with one Santorini producer.

“At €11 a bottle it was very hard to sell his wines, but now because Santorini has become very popular, they’re €80-100 for the same quality of wine and we can sell out in two days,” reported Nordlien.

His decision to pay serious attention to English wine back in 2017, returning home with no fewer than 40 different wines, is a major factor in Norway’s current position as the UK’s largest export market.

“It’s important to get there early and build relationships,” Nordlien insisted.

When it comes to Austria’s profile in Norway, Nordlien reported that whites from the Wachau still dominate sales. Although Burgenland red specialists such as Weingut Wachter-Wiesler and Weingut Moric have made a promising start, he suggested that, for the moment at least, Norwegian consumers “don’t look for Austrian reds”. More promisingly, however, added Nordlien:

“They like to drink Pinot Noir. If Burgundy is too expensive, then they like to look elsewhere.”

He confirmed that Germany and the US are already benefitting from increasingly prohibitive Côte d’Or prices, so could there also be an opportunity for Austria here?

“I think the most interesting wines are Blaufränkisch and St Laurent,” argued Nordlien, “but it might be that Pinot Noir is easier.”

One producer who can certainly corroborate this theory is Lukas Strobl, winemaker at the 15-hectare Clemens Strobl estate founded in Wagram by his father in 2008. Grüner Veltiner may dominate production here but, revealed Strobl, “on the international markets Pinot Noir is our most important wine”. With no more than 4,000 bottles of Pinot Noir to sell – and as few as 2,000 bottles in the 2020 vintage just coming onto the market – this winery’s export ambitions are tightly focused.

“We try to sell mainly in Europe,” explained Strobl. “What’s the point of selling to 15 different countries when it takes a few thousand bottles to be visible?”

An Austrian fine wine masterclass that followed immediately in the wake of the fine wine conference offered further opportunity to inspect this country’s fine wine credentials.

In his role as moderator, respected Austrian wine critic Willi Balanjuk proposed: “What I think makes fine wine different to industrial wine is that fine wine allows you to communicate a story.”

That story might be the painstakingly rebuilt terraces of Hirtzberger ’s Riesling Ried Spitzer Singerriedel, the intriguing maturation trajectory of Schloss Gobelsburg’s Grüner Veltliner Ried Kammerner Lamm, or perhaps the thrilling rarity of Stadlmann’s Zierfandler Ried Mandel-Höh, an expression that shows the quality of an indigenous Austrian variety represented today by just 90ha of vineyard.

Then there’s the emergence over the last 30 years of dynamic new stories such as Styrian Sauvignon Blanc. “You have that brilliant transparency, that purity, that aromatic element,” enthused Paula Sidore from JancisRobinson.com about Austria’s highly distinctive expression of this international grape.

“These wines for me are an intersection of Pannonian power and Alpine agility.”

Of course, the Austrian story doesn’t stop at red and white. Sweet styles may be perennially unfashionable, but this country’s TBA and Ruster Ausbruch wines rival Tokaji and Sauternes for both quality and heritage.

Rather more on-trend is sparkling wine, an increasingly exciting category for Austria that deserves far greater international attention.

Today’s fine wines do not taste the same or evolve in the same way as those of 50 years ago. Who knows what the fine wines of another half-century’s time will be like, or indeed how today’s fine wines will be judged by then?

Rather than focusing on a divisive, contentious, restrictive definition of fine wine, perhaps it instead makes greater sense to emulate the more personal response of US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Setting out his test for obscenity in a famous judgement of 1964, he simply declared: “I know it when I see it.”