Austria: History

Austria is among the many places into which celtic tribes are thought to have introduced grape growing, but historical records begin with the romans. That Austria suffered under domitian’s notorious ad 92 edict prohibiting viticultural expansion can only be assumed. But this much is documented: Emperor Probus, in rescinding that edict two centuries later, expressly encouraged new plantings both in Gaul and in Pannonia—the Great Plain that incorporates today’s eastern Austria. From his 5th-century base in the Roman garrison town of Mautern, St Severin is believed to have planted the first wachau vineyards. Control of the subsequently burgeoning vineyards west of Vienna passed largely to a collection of Bavarian ecclesiastical institutions in the wake of Charlemagne’s victories over the Avars in the late 8th century. Numerous important Austrian estates and vineyards are still owned and some operated by Roman Catholic institutions, which are by no means the exclusive bottlers of official Messwein, whose consumption transcends mass. The legacy of several Bavarian founders lives on in more than just the physical structures that they left behind, including the Wachau’s towering stone terraces of Mediterranean inspiration, begun in the 11th century. Stift Göttweig, a huge wine-growing monastery that dominates the landscape south of Krems, was founded by a bishop of Bavarian Passau in 1083; yet-larger klosterneuburg dates from soon afterward; and the Salomon family of Krems-Stein’s Undhof have for two centuries been renewing a land-for-wine rental contract with a charitable institution in Passau which first acquired those vineyards around 1200.