Region & History

What is a Große Reserve? This is the highest tier of Austrian sparkling wine PDO, whose grapes must come at least 85 percent from a single municipality. In Lower Austria this opens up many possible names for the label, since here lie two major wine towns, Langenlois in the Kamptal and Poysdorf in the Weinviertel, whose slopes and loess ridges supply grapes for sparkling wine.

The legal framework is young. The Sparkling Wine Designation Ordinance was published on December 5, 2016, and amended in 2018. It requires every PDO sparkling wine to carry one of three tiers: Klassik, Reserve, or Große Reserve. How the whole pyramid is structured is explained in the journey through the Vienna cellars.

Wines may also carry the addition "Hauersekt" on the bottle. Hauer is the Austrian word for winegrower, and it refers to a sparkling wine made by the producer themselves. According to trade press reports, tirage, disgorgement, and shipping are all handled by the winegrower in this case. By contrast, a bottle simply labeled "Sekt" without PDO status may hold a base wine sourced from anywhere.

These estates existed long before the ordinance. Weingut Bründlmayer in Langenlois bottled its first vintage in 1947. According to the estate, Willi Bründlmayer senior took over unused vineyards after the Second World War, some of which later became among Austria's most celebrated sites. Today the estate also produces sparkling wine at the Reserve tier.

Poysdorf is considered the sparkling wine town of the Weinviertel, and for 2023 the town crowned its own Stadtsekt alongside a Stadtwein and Stadtfrizzante. In Langenlois, Steininger produces single-varietal vintage sparkling wines where, according to the estate, everything from bottling to disgorgement happens in its own cellar.