The Wachau. Grüner Veltliner and Riesling on the Danube.

A tiny region on the Danube

The Wachau lies on the Danube in Lower Austria, between the towns of Krems and Melk. It covers only about 1,300 hectares along roughly 20 kilometers of river, a fraction of the size of Bordeaux. Steep slopes, narrow terraces, castle ruins and cliffs make it one of the most beautiful wine landscapes anywhere.

In the Middle Ages there were far more vineyards. A cooler period pushed growers down from the highest terraces, and some are only now being replanted as the climate warms. Spitz, home of the Hirtzbergers, is the coolest corner of the Wachau, where cold air flowing down a side valley keeps the wines leaner and fresher, especially in warm years.

Stone terraces and gneiss

The main rock in the Wachau is gneiss, which looks like granite but is layered. The vines grow out of dry stone walls built without mortar, and maintaining them is a constant struggle. After a storm in 2002, huge sections collapsed across the region and had to be rebuilt by hand. As the film shows, this kind of viticulture only survives if the wines sell for fair prices.

On these slopes, as an old German saying goes, nothing but vines would make sense: where a plow can go, no vine should stand.

Grüner Veltliner and Riesling

Grüner Veltliner dominates the Wachau, with Riesling in the very best rocky sites. Grüner is a chameleon that can give simple, fruity wine on easy soils or something far more profound on stone. Its signature is a peppery note, now known to come from a compound called rotundone, along with fruit from apple to exotic and a delicate green bean or pea character.

Riesling thrives on the steep terraces behind the Hirtzberger house, with long autumns and late picking building aroma and harmony. Anne Krebiehl MW and Stuart Pigott explain why top Wachau wines can be powerful yet lifted, and why mature Grüner Veltliner is sometimes mistaken for great white Burgundy.

Food is another strength. Federspiel wines are wonderfully flexible at the table even when young, and a bottle of Grüner Veltliner is the safe choice when everyone has ordered a different dish. Smaragd wines need some years in bottle, when Riesling and Grüner become more harmonious and grow closer in taste. The family keeps a cellar of older vintages that are no longer for sale, just for that pleasure.

Steinfeder, Federspiel, Smaragd

After the Austrian wine scandal of 1985, when a few large producers were caught adding diethylene glycol to cheap wine, the Wachau's quality growers had already started to organize. Through the Vinea Wachau association they set rules stricter than the law and created three dry categories: light Steinfeder, medium Federspiel and rich Smaragd.

The category depends largely on when the grapes are picked. That means several passes through the vineyard, with pickers sorting berry by berry. The Hirtzbergers' team of local helpers becomes part of the family each harvest, and the work shows in the glass.

These light, crisp, totally dry wines were the opposite of the heavy, sweet wines caught up in the scandal, and the Wachau's push for quality helped pull the rest of Austria back from the brink. The growers also chose large wooden casks and steel tanks over small new barrels, because they did not want an international style.

Three generations of Franz

The Hirtzbergers have been documented in the Wachau since 1634. The grandfather began bottling wine at a time when most farmers sold in bulk, and as mayor he helped fight a planned power plant on the Danube. Franz senior built the estate's reputation, with its first bottling of the Singerriedel vineyard in 1987.

Then came a delicate problem: both of his sons wanted to be winemakers, and neither wanted to sit in the office. Watch the film to see how the family solved it, and to join them at their annual tasting of the new vintage.

Go furtherWant to taste along? Find Hirtzberger’s wines and where to buy them near you on Wine-Searcher. To explore the estates, vineyards and wines of the Wachau and Austria further, the wein.plus wine guide is a great resource.