[Music] this week we will be covering Central and Eastern Europe to include Austria Hungary Switzerland and the eastern Mediterranean Greece [Music] here you'll see some bullet points with a brief history of Austria's wine industry as you come down probably one of the most interesting facts that's happened is in the 1920s Austria was the third largest wine producer worldwide and unfortunately this all kind of came to a big halt in the 1980s when it was discovered that some of the winemakers were adding chemicals and basically they were adding antifreeze to artificially sweetened and add richness to the wines and that was discovered so worldwide people's totally stopped drinking it in a response to this Austria focused on better controls and higher quality wines winemakers shifted from bulk wines to more boutique wines and today Austria has regained a reputation for quality wines and has increased their export but they still are trying to recovery [Music] well I think while most Americans know that Austria is in Central Europe and attached somehow to Germany it's hard to kind of place it on a map so here you'll see on the left hand side it is south east of Germany and northeast of Italy and it probably has more influence from German winemaking then Italian but there is influence from all of the countries around and as you see here on the right hand side this is a map of Austria and the winemaking regions that they have and they're all as you can see on the eastern part of Austria there are low hills and plains in this area and the Alps cover most of the country [Music] there are 36 grape varietals approved for qualitites vine our quality wine 22 of the varietals are white and 14 are red [Music] so two-thirds of the production is white wine and the reason for this as the climate is similar to Baden in South Germany and it lies basically just at the same latitude but to the east of Germany and it's viticultural conditions are very similar as well just to look at a couple of these grape varietals Gruner Veltliner is a third of all of Austria's planting this is indigenous to Austria and you'll see a couple of familiar ones right here so Mueller thurgau vice verbal under which is also known as Pinot Blanc in other parts of the world Riesling and also more a yawn which is also known as chardonnay and again it's kind of frustrating in the wine world everybody else causes a certain a why don't you call it Chardonnay and unfortunately it just doesn't quite work that way they have their own name and they're not going to change it [Music] moving over to the red varietals a third of the production as we mentioned before is red wine vie guilt is the second most planted grape it's a cross between blaufränkisch and Saint Laurent so this is a great that was cloned together and then blaufränkisch is commercial importance in the u.s. we have these plantings in the US as well and then finally st. Laurent so you can see different varietals than we have seen in many other places [Music] so the terroir for Austria is continental it's a cool continental with mild summers very cold winters it's drier in the Northeast and more humid to the south so it kind of reminds us a little bit of the US where we're very humid down here [Music] some other important terroir factors is that a nude Danube River flows through some of the wine growing regions and we learned in Germany how the Sun reflecting off the water helps to warm the vines it's also a water source and it's also a transport waterway there's a large variety of soils in Austria which would equal and mean different grape varietals being grown and the expression of these varietals tasting different for instance Gruner Veltliner is planted in deep louis soils you don't see this lowest soil all over the world and it's very unique and different [Music] so as we see throughout Europe there are the EU compliance for producing wine the laws in Germany and Austria are very similar to each other as you can see the bottom level here is the basic table wine are vine there's no place of origin if you see a bottle that just says Austrian wine on it or vine on it and you know that this is basic table wine [Music] moving up with land vine this is the PGI distinction where they have geographical indication and it's labeled with one of three regions [Music] as we move further up here the koala tots and product cuts fine is the PDO the high-end so this accounts for 2/3 of Austria's production it's sourced from a single quality wine region sub region or DAC and it's also has specifications for must wait how far apart the vines are grown what grapes can be grown in certain regions etc and in like Germany there are subcategories within koala tots vine for ripeness levels [Music] so what is DAC DAC is to Austria as AOC is to France and basically they are Austria's appellation systems they produce the highest quality so if you see these on a label you know that you're guaranteed higher quality of wine and like other appellation systems they specify the allowed grapes the ABV aging requirements and other aspects right here as you can see there are currently 13 DAC regions in Austria while it's not written here one of the most interesting facts about Austria is the region of Vienna and it is the only region worldwide that is a city and a wine growing region so it lies on the Danube River and it is the only European capital city to have a P do with it at city limits and this is true worldwide as well the vineyard area is tiny but quite significant in terms of culture in history [Music] in Austria most of the vineyards lie in three states the first one neater österreich is in lower austria it's the largest wine growing region in Austria it has warm dry summers and very cold winters the Danube River flows through this region and as you can see there's some sub regions that are included this is a little bit deep for this class so you're not required to know him but I just wanted to put him here for you that vine vertel DAC wines are pungent spicy and peppery the Waku wines tend to age well so in looking at this map hopefully you've done that you may wonder why is this area called Lower Austria so although the province is located to the upper northeast of Austria it's called Lower Austria because it sits lower on the Danube which flows from west to east [Music] the next area Burgenland is located to the south of neater oyster ish and it borders hungry the presence of a lake is in the area the largest cool basin lake in all of europe is there this contributes to botrytis being produced in parts of the region as you read down here rooster book is a very famous highly regarded dessert wine it's produced in rust its mix of boat Rytas and less concentrated grapes and it's aged before release it would be very expensive if you are able to purchase it [Music] located to the south of Burgenland is steiermark the most widely planted grape here is Welsh Riesling a varietal e'en Riesling and it is unrelated to the true Riesling in the sub-region Wester steiermark there is a well-known grape there Balaur a while Bakker which is commonly made into a slimmer Rose a which is a traditional wine produced in this region [Music] let's move on to our pairing for Austria as you can see there is a traditional Austrian dish that's pasta with ham and this pairs well with our wine which is a sloth so it's a hundred percent Gruner Veltliner from the grape varietals that's going to be a white grape and the most planted grape in Austria you could drink this from anywhere from 2019 to 2022 it's going to run you about $55 and it'll be nice mild acidic well balanced wine [Music] it's interesting to note in Europe that the wine production in especially in Eastern Europe has been greatly affected not only by world war two but also by the Soviet communists and when the Soviet communists ruled during this time period they destroyed a large portion of the wine infrastructure and the industry in eastern bloc countries what they did was focus on quantity not quality most of the wine are none of the wine was exported so you had no international influence there and a lot of the why knowledge didn't transfer from Eastern Europe to Western Europe back and forth so that kind of came to a complete standstill with it and finally in addition to that if you think about it a lot of the vineyards were destroyed from bombing military people coming through trampling them etc so specifically hungry hungry was the most affected out of all of these Eastern Bloc countries Switzerland and Austria swine industry was fairly unaffected by it [Music] again as hungry was under communist rule post-world War two the quality was largely neglected however now Hungary's wine industry has begun to recover there's a lot of exchange of information from Western Europe to Eastern Europe there's a huge desire to know more about Hungarian wines and there's a large tourism aspect to the wines there [Music] there are 22 regions in Hungary for growing wines hundreds of grape varietals over 70% of the wines produced in Hungary are white wines and the soils generally are volcanic and limestone in nature [Music] Tokai is the oldest and most famous hungarian region it is the oldest classified wine region in the world it is a PDO classification and it's located in the north of Hungary the climate is cold and really good for boat rightis approved grape varietals include ferment ferment is a white grape varietal the second one is harsh level ooh again these produce dry white wines sparkling wines and famous world famous dessert wines [Music] the Tokai a zoo has been made for centuries it is one of the most expensive wines worldwide the boat itis grapes are picked and mashed and then they're mixed with a base wine the desert wine is sweet with a bright acidity it's kind of interesting to note that balance and these are really really phenomenal lines they have a note of tangerine and cinnamon and they can age indefinitely if you were to get a tokaiya zoo I would strongly suggest pairing this with foie gras foie gras is fatted goose liver and it is a traditional appearing in hungry what they recommend that you would eat if you are going to drink the one [Music] I don't know how many of you have been on the Switzerland program but we have at Devon school of hospitality we have a program where we go over for five weeks and if you're there please look into the wine industry and drink some of their wines Switzerland produces a very small amount of wine and they export very little of that most of those exports go to Germany but again very very little I think it's 2% is exported to Germany and the reason for this is their demand for wine is much higher than their production and the second reason is the Swiss franc has a five value and it makes their wine expensive when it's exported [Music] these are some really good wines and they have a number of different varietals that are available for them to use and we have a couple here Pinot Noir shell sa which is indigenous to Switzerland Gamay which we found in Beaujolais and Merlot the most commonly grown grape in France so you see a lot of French influence here but that shell sa is a an indigenous grape to Switzerland [Music] since it's not in the EU Switzerland has its own wine laws there are three wine classifications class three is table wine first when you see listed here the second one you see listed class two is generic indication of origin and class one is really their top label with an AOC so an apple acción de origen ctrl-a these are overseen by Canton's which are states within Switzerland and they can add further classifications and restrictions within each of those Canton's and finally there is a large range of regulations for wine producers throughout Switzerland so just because they are not part of the EU doesn't mean they don't have strict regulations [Music] so in drinking Swiss wine if you're gonna go ahead and drink it and pair it with some food what better than the traditional Swiss cheese fondue and try this cough DeVoe bulan grande crucial essay from valise valise is the Canton that it comes from or the wine-producing region Grand Cru obviously means that it's going to be a high-level Chesil a chalet is the grape varietal and then the cough de veau Milan is the wine producer this is a dry medium acidity wine ready to drink now it has notes of flowers honey bees wax and it will run you $33 if you are able to find it hopefully this section on wines from Austria Hungary and Switzerland will help you understand Eastern European wines better again my best suggestion is to go and try these wines in their home country and do some tours throughout the area