The place: a shallow lake and the villages round it#
Burgenland is Austria’s second wine state by area, about 11,500 hectares, and the one closest to my door in Brno: Gols is 2 h 15 away by way of Bratislava, closer than Prague. Almost everything that matters happens round the Neusiedlersee, a steppe lake 36 kilometres long, on average a metre deep, ringed by reeds and shared with Hungary, a national park since 1993 and a UNESCO cultural landscape since 2001.
The wine map splits at the water. The east shore, from Gols down to Pamhagen, is the Neusiedlersee area, about 6,000 hectares of Zweigelt country running into the Seewinkel, the lake corner. The west shore from Jois to Rust is the Leithaberg, about 3,000 hectares under the last low ridge of the Alps, where limestone comes to the surface and Blaufränkisch turns serious.
Gols, at the north-east corner, is a working wine town and home of the nine-estate Pannobile group. Oggau am Neusiedler See sits on the west shore at about 130 metres. Rust, a few kilometres south of it, is a baroque free city of about 1,900 people, storks on the chimneys from April to August, and about 450 hectares of vines with a sweet wine that bought the town its freedom.
Terroir: limestone, gravel, sand and 2,000 hours of sun#
The vineyards lie between 115 metres, the level of the lake, and about 300 metres on the Leithaberg; the differences are in the ground, not the slope.
On the Leithaberg the ridge gives limestone and mica schist, sometimes within one parcel, with loess and sand below. Blaufränkisch on the limestone comes tight and chalky; on the schist it turns darker and smokier, and the growers of Jois, Purbach and Oggau will pour you both. Across the water, the Parndorf plateau above Gols is gravel, sand, loess and pockets of black earth. In the Seewinkel the soil is sand, with salt pans, and the water table is close enough to touch.
The climate is Pannonian: hot, dry summers, cold winters, about 2,000 sunshine hours a year. In autumn the lake sends morning mist over the vines; botrytis settles on the berries in the Seewinkel and around Rust, and the sun dries them by noon. That mist is the reason for the sweet wines.
Grapes and styles: Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt and Ruster Ausbruch#
Blaufränkisch is the grape I bring people here for. Late-ripening, dark, with sour cherry, pepper and an acidity that keeps it upright even in a hot year, it is Austria’s second red grape after Zweigelt and most of it grows in Burgenland. Leithaberg DAC, from the 2008 vintage for reds, asks for restraint and site; Mittelburgenland DAC (2005) and Eisenberg DAC (2009) are its other homes. In Moravia, two hours north, the same grape is Frankovka; I pour the comparison at Velké Pavlovice.
Zweigelt is the everyday red of the east shore, the Neusiedlersee DAC grape (from 2011) and Austria’s most planted red: a 1922 crossing of Blaufränkisch and St. Laurent made by Fritz Zweigelt at Klosterneuburg, cherry-fruited and soft in tannin. St. Laurent, its Pinot-like parent, is the quiet talent; Pinot Noir likes the Leithaberg limestone.
Whites are a minority: Weißburgunder, Chardonnay, Neuburger, Grüner Veltliner, Welschriesling, and in Rust the historic Furmint, dry and saline.
Ruster Ausbruch#
Ausbruch means broken out: botrytised, shrivelled berries picked out of the bunch by hand. Rust has branded a crowned R into its barrels since 1524, and on 3 December 1681 it became a Royal Free City by paying Emperor Leopold I 60,000 gold guilders and 500 Eimer of Furmint Ausbruch, about 30,000 litres. Since 2020 Ruster Ausbruch has been a DAC of its own: botrytised berries, at least 30 degrees KMW of must weight, Rust only. It is golden to amber, with apricot, honey and a cut of acidity that stops it being merely sweet.
Producers to know#
Gut Oggau in Oggau is the estate most guests ask me about. Eduard Tscheppe and Stephanie Tscheppe-Eselböck bought it in 2007, started with nine hectares and now farm about fifteen, Demeter-certified. The cellar is old wooden casks, spontaneous ferments, no fining, no filtration and no added sulfur, a choice I unpack in sulfites in wine. The wines are labelled as a family with drawn faces, from grandparents Mechthild and Bertholdi down to children such as Theodora and Winifred, oldest vines to youngest. From April to September the estate opens for walk-in tastings on Wednesdays and Thursdays, which in the natural scene is rare.
Claus Preisinger in Gols took over about three hectares from his father around 2000 and farms about 19 hectares today, in more than 60 parcels of limestone and gravel. Biodynamic since 2006 (what that means, without the mysticism) and a member of respekt-BIODYN and of Pannobile, he built the concrete-and-glass winery with a green roof on the Goldberg in 2009 and put clay amphorae in it the same year, among the first in Austria. Puszta Libre, a chilled, light Zweigelt and St. Laurent, is the bottle you see in wine bars; the single-site Blaufränkisch from Edelgraben, Bühl and Goldberg is the reason I ask for an appointment.
Meinklang in Pamhagen is the Michlits family’s Demeter mixed farm: cattle, grain and vines, with further vineyards on the Somló hill in Hungary, and an unpruned Pinot Gris called Graupert that shows what a vine does when nobody tells it what to do.
Gernot and Heike Heinrich in Gols, also respekt-BIODYN, make polished Leithaberg Blaufränkisch. In Rust, Heidi Schröck has made wine since 1983 and now works with her sons Georg and Johannes: Furmint, Weißburgunder, Blaufränkisch and a Ruster Ausbruch I use to explain the whole town. Visits are by arrangement.
What a day here looks like on tour#
Burgenland is the third leg of my Wachau, Kamptal and Burgenland tour, after the Riesling terraces of the Wachau and the loess of Kamptal and Kremstal and before the Heurigen of Vienna, and the change is deliberate: from steep, white and cool to flat, red and hot.
We sleep in Rust. The morning is Gols, on the far side of the lake, about 40 minutes round the northern shore: a cellar at the edge of the vines, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch from one grower side by side. Back on the west shore we stop in Oggau, and if it is a Wednesday or Thursday the Ab Hof door is open.
Lunch is the lake: Zander, the pike-perch, grilled or in a paprika fish soup, with a dry Furmint or a Weißburgunder. The afternoon is Rust on foot, the storks, the baroque courtyards, one Ausbruch cellar and the crowned R on the barrel heads.
Dinner is a Blaufränkisch table: goose if it is November, roast pork with caraway otherwise, and a glass of Ausbruch at the end.
Practical#
Vienna Schwechat is the airport, about 50 minutes to Gols and an hour to Rust; Bratislava is closer to Gols, about 45 minutes. From Brno I drive down through Bratislava, 2 h 15 to Gols, 2 h 30 to Rust. The motorway needs an Austrian digital vignette.
The best months are May and June, and September into October. Karakterre, the fair of organic, biodynamic and natural growers, fills the Esterházy Orangerie in Eisenstadt in mid-May. July and August are hot and full of cyclists on the path round the lake; bring a hat and something for the mosquitoes in the reeds. November is goose and open sweet-wine cellars.
Most tastings are by appointment, and several natural estates receive no visitors at all; I pour their wines at dinner instead of promising the door. Buschenschänken and farm-gate sales are often cash only. For Burgenland alone, a long weekend from Brno or Vienna on a private tour is the right size.
