BURGENLAND & STEIERMARK

From Vienna, you don't have to descend much more than half an hour along the Danube or you're in Burgenland, a region known for red wine and the sweet botrytis wines of the Neusiedlersee DAC. Via a bit of Hungary, you drive another 2 hours south to arrive in Styria, where a very different landscape and climate produces very different wines. Burgenland and Styria in 48 hours: it can be done! TEXT + IMAGE KARIN LEEUWENHOEK

08 HOURS
Bird watching!
A not very common activity during a wine trip: bird watching. Besides wine, water and wellness, our first accommodation - St. Martins Therme & Lodge in Frauenkirchen,near Lake Neusiedler - specialises in so-called 'safari tours' for the early birds among us. Jeep in, binoculars on and peek. The area is rich in shallow ponds, created by rainwater and a walhalla for all kinds of water birds. The famous Neusiedler See is also such a rainwater lake, but a lot bigger. Yet this large steppe lake, located mostly in Austria and partly in Hungary, is so shallow that you can just walk through it in most years. The flat nature reserve and 'cultural landscape' has been a Unesco heritage site since 2001. Nice stuff, but of course that's not what we come for: we want wine!

10 HOURS
Neusiedler See
Around Lake Neusiedl you will find many wine villages and towns like Gols, Purbach, Eisenstadt and Rust, teeming with wineries. Their specialities: red Zweigelt and sweet white botrytis wines. The conditions there - sunny and windy, so that the morning mist from Lake Neusiedl soon evaporates - are ideal for the development of "noble rot" (botrytis) in the grapes. As a result, they dry out and become extra concentrated in flavour, with unique aromas of botrytis added. An example of such a special (dessert) wine is the Beerenauslese or the even more concentrated Trockenbeerenauslese. From the small town of Rust on the Neusiedler See comes the unique Ruster Ausbruch. Because it also concentrates acidity in the grapes, these wines have pleasant acidity in addition to plenty of sweetness. They are made from white grape varieties such as welschriesling and chardonnay. Thanks to the warm influence of the Pannonian climate from Hungary, you will also find a lot of blue grape cultivation for red wine production in this region: mainly zweigelt, but also blaufränkisch, st. laurent, pinot noir and Bordeaux varieties. A gemütliche, authentic place on Lake Neusiedler to enjoy the local wines and cuisine is Gasthaus zur Dankbarkeit in Podersdorf.

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