Region & History

Where is Austria's oldest brewing town? In Weitra, right at the northern edge of the Waldviertel, near the Czech border. On May 26, 1321, King Friedrich the Fair granted the citizens the right to brew beer, and forbade brewing within a one-mile radius of the town.

This privilege turned a border outpost into a brewing center. Around 1645, Weitra had 33 civic breweries, plus a municipal one and a manorial one. Today only two operations remain, yet the town still calls itself the Brewing Town.

Weitra was founded by the Kuenringer family. Their ancestor Hadmar I also endowed the Cistercian Stift Zwettl in 1138, which shaped the surrounding landscape. A Weitra organic beer bears his first name in his memory.

The Zwettler Brewery first appears in a document from 1708, as the “Preuer auf der Stiegen” in Siernau. In 1890 the Schwarz family bought the business, now run by the fifth generation. Since 2003, the family has also owned Bierwerkstatt Weitra.

The second major name is Schrems. Brewing there is documented as early as 1410, and since 1838, when Jakob Trojan acquired the brewery, it has remained in family hands. Incidentally, there's no EU protected designation of origin for Waldviertel beer; no Austrian name appears in the beer register.

Today three names mainly share the field: Zwettler in Zwettl, Schremser in Schrems, and Bierwerkstatt in Weitra. All three are small to medium-sized family operations. Together they keep alive a tradition stretching back more than seven centuries in the region.