In recent years, the Marketing Day of Austria Wine Marketing (AWM) was inevitably shaped by the Corona crisis management, this year there was hope again. Wine tourism managing director Christian Zechmeister was particularly pleased with the developments in the wine export market: “New markets are opening up here, such as Canada, to which our wine style fits perfectly.” Spotlight. It’s not just about orange or natural wines, but about the “international stylistics”, according to Zechmeister. This is characterized by more acid and the unfiltered character – often it does not even need a test number.
“PIWI”: The future, only the taste is still missing
A particularly important topic for viticulture was the fungus-resistant (short: PIWI) varieties. Wein Burgenland chairman Matthias Siess is certain that these will play a decisive role in the future. It is true that climate change with heat and drought has significantly reduced the risk of fungi in Burgenland, mushrooms need five hours of leaf wetness and temperatures of 20 to 30 degrees. In Styria, there are far greater problems with powdery mildew and downy mildew. Nevertheless, Oidium and Perenospora remain the most common fungal diseases in viticulture. Unless you rely on PIWI varieties. These also have the advantage in Burgenland that they have to be sprayed far less – which is entirely in line with the EU, which wants to halve the use of spraying agents by 2030. Siess: “We’re on course there, we sprayed six times this year, a few years ago it was 20 times.”
Only one problem remains: “Some PIWI wines taste quite good, but there is still nothing that can keep up with our Blaufränkisch.”
