The Wachau is the top subregion of Lower Austria, the country's most important wine region in terms of size and reputation for high quality; the word 'lower' refers to the lower part of the Danube, which flows through it.
Austria's vineyards all lie in the distant, more exotic eastern half of this landlocked country, some 108,000 acres forming a crescent along the eastern border, worked by just over 20,000 growers and around 6,500 wineries.
Vines have been planted on the Wachau's stark, rocky terraces since the thirteenth century.
Austrian wines bear very little resemblance in flavour to German ones: Austria's dry whites are much fuller in body and bolder in character than Germany's filigreed dry whites, and the same is true of the reds.
The Wachau is the only place in all of Austria where the three words steinfeder, federspiel and smaragd appear — categories created by the Vinea Wachau, an association of top Wachau producers, to set their dry white wines apart, and which must be listed on the label.
Austria's modern industry was rebuilt from the ground up by small family estates after the 1985 diethylene-glycol scandal, which one winemaker called a cleansing thunderstorm; today top-quality wine is a virtual religion there, and Austria has one of the highest percentages of land under certified organic production in the EU.
