Uncorking Vienna’s Wine Tradition in the UNESCO-Protected Heurigen

The bus careened up the steep, winding hillside in Vienna, and I gripped the chrome bar for balance. “The ride isn’t usually this crazy,” assured my guide, Ilse Heigerth, kohl-rimmed blue eyes widening. “I promise it will be worth it.”

By the time we reached Café Kahlenberg and stood on its terrace, looking down over the city—and 1,600 acres of picturesque vineyards that tumble down to the Danube River—all memory of the white-knuckle bus trip had been erased. I inhaled, imagining the sweet aroma of ripening grapes, the tang of wine on my tongue. “The Austrian name for Vienna is Wien, and the Austrian word for wine is wein,” Heigerth explained. “Just two vowels, switched. It can’t get any closer to expressing what wine means to us.”

Vienna is the world’s only major metropolis that grows wine grapes within its city limits, with about 500 vintners, mostly small, producing 660 gallons of wines per year. Thanks to the chalky soil of the Viennese Alps, white varietals, like Riesling and Gruner Veltliner, make up 80 percent of overall production. Unlike in some of the world’s better-known wine-producing regions, wines in Vienna are mostly drunk farm-to-bottle, while still young.

In Heilingstadt, a hilly, Bavarian-settled village about three miles southeast of the cafe, Heigerth and I slide into seats under a green canvas umbrella on the outdoor terrace of the heuriger, or family-run tavern, of Mayer am Pfarrplatz, one of Vienna’s largest vintners. Heurigen, many based in lovingly restored historic homes that date to the 1600s, are located on the outskirts of Vienna, in villages such as Grinzing, Nussdorf, Sivering, Stammersdorft. Each tavern has a distinctive character, and serves different varietals and vintages.

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The tradition originated in medieval times, and was inscribed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2019. In the spirit of Gemütlichkeit (congeniality), friends and family meet at heurigen to enjoy wine, cheeses, charcuterie, bread, salads, and a variety of Viennese spreads and pickled foods, plus Viennese folk music. “Heuriger culture is probably the most authentic Viennese experience you can have,” Heigerth tells me.

Heurigen

She orders two glasses of sturm (“storm,” named for its cloudy appearance), a 3 percent ABV wine made from partially fermented grape must that tastes something like a lightly alcoholic grape juice. Sturm is available only during the first couple weeks of the grape harvest each fall, and only in Austria. I sit back, savoring the wine and conversation.

Austrian wines account for only about 1% of the global wine market. But even without a large presence on the world stage, the country’s vintners keep innovating. Mayer am Pfarrplatz, for example, just introduced the country’s first alcohol-free wine for sober travelers. In downtown Vienna, Hertz & Seele, the first modern interpretation of the heurigen tradition, opened last year.

Austrian winemakers have also been at the forefront of sparkling, biodynamic, lower-alcohol, and mash-fermented wines. Claire Yuan, CEO of Vinifero, a wine bar and shop in the Leopoldstadt neighborhood of Vienna, says, “Some winemakers are going in the direction of spontaneous fermentation, and wines without filtration. Austria is one of the better-developed places for natural wines, and the ratio of vineyards that are farming organic is quite high compared to other countries.”

Another change has come in the form of the Female Wine Collective, established nearly a year ago to shine a spotlight on women in the wine industry. Many of Vienna’s wineries are family run, and Yuan explains, “It’s very traditional that the last name of the male winemaker is on the label, but it’s rare that his wife or partner is credited as well—and she’s 50 percent of the business. We wanted to create a stage for the women in wine, plus a network and a safe space where we can speak openly about professional challenges and achievements.”

Heigerth and I move on to the vineyards themselves, hiking the slopes between vines. I reach out to stroke the velvety petals of the bright pink roses planted at the end of each row, the agricultural version of a canary in a coalmine; when the roses struggle, vineyard managers know they must take extra measures to protect their crops. We pause to watch Fritz Weininger, vintner of Weingut Wieninger, use a forklift to load large green bins of harvested grapes into a truck.

On Nussberg, Vienna’s most famous hill, a number of pop-up taverns offer small-production wines during the summer. Others are permanent, like Weingut Wieninger, where you can take in paintinglike views while sipping and snacking. We taste several wines: a crisp, slightly dry 2022 Riesling; a fragrant, lively 2023 Gruner Veltliner; and a spicy 2022 Muskateller.

The most unusual is the 2023 Gemischter Satz, Austria’s co-fermented multigrape “field blend,” which is celebrating its tenth anniversary of Districtus Austriae Controllatus (similar to Denomination of Origin) status. On paper, Gemischter Satz sounds like too much of a good thing: it’s made from at least three, and up to 13, different white varietals that have been hand-harvested, then macerated and pressed together. In the glass, however, it blooms with complexity—much like the landscape it comes from—and is led by a burst of stone fruit and a hint of honey.

Weininger says, “When I first started, people in Vienna didn’t like wine from Vienna at all. Today they love it, they respect it, and they buy and drink it. My generation turned it completely around. [Now] when I visit San Francisco or Tokyo and sommeliers know that there is this unique style of wine, Gemischter Satz, and that the original comes from Vienna, I am proud.”

This deep-seated pride isn’t just about the romance of the Austrian landscape, or the jewel-hued beverage in the glass, or even the warmth of the heurigen. It’s also a genuine expression of tradition, in a country where wine has sustained communities for centuries through agriculture, economics, and sense of place. As that simple two-letter swap implies—Wien to wein—wine has and likely always will play a center-stage role in Vienna.

Robin Catalano’s writing has appeared in National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, TIME, Smithsonian, Conde Nast Traveler, AFAR, Hemispheres, Robb Report, Bon Appetit, Fodor’s, ROVA, Insider, Boston Globe, Albany Times Union, and a variety of other regional publications.