Region & History

What does Sekt g.U. Burgenland mean? It refers to Austrian sparkling wine made from grapes grown in the province, officially tested and certified for its protected origin. The abbreviation g.U. stands for protected designation of origin. At the simplest tier, the province name alone suffices—naming anything smaller would actually be prohibited.

The legal basis is the Sekt Designation Ordinance, enacted on December 5, 2016 and amended in 2018. It organizes Austrian Sekt g.U. into three tiers: Klassik, Reserve, and Große Reserve. Official testing takes place partly at the Federal Office for Viticulture in Eisenstadt, the capital of Burgenland. A Sekt without g.U. status, by contrast, may use base wine from any origin and reveals nothing about the region.

Burgenland itself is a young corner of Austria. It has belonged to the Republic only since 1921; before that, it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. As a wine region it's known for red wine and sweet wine, with sparkling wine long an afterthought. The technique arrived from elsewhere: Schlumberger, founded in Bad Vöslau in 1842, is credited with producing Austria's first traditional-method Sekt.

Today two kinds of producers work in the region. Dedicated sparkling wine houses like Szigeti in Gols focus, by their own account, on traditional bottle fermentation, sourcing grapes from contract growers across Burgenland and Lower Austria. Estates such as Esterházy in Eisenstadt or Leo Hillinger also produce Sekt under the Burgenland designation alongside their still wines.

Anyone picking up a bottle from this area will find two key pieces of information on the label: the tier and the province. Together, they reveal more about origin than any brand name ever could.