When Martin Muthenthaler stands at the top of Vießlinger Stern and looks along Spitzer Graben, he can see the future and hear the past. He sees his vineyards and hears the echo of his colleagues who, some more loudly than others, called them nuts back in the 1980s and 90s. The “nuts” were those few Don Quichottes from Wachau who tended their vineyards up there, where the sun never shines and where Wachau ended long ago, on steep, barren hills between old dry-stone walls, a thoroughly laborious and manual feat. Today, Muthenthaler, who once learned to be a car mechanic and worked for a long time as a driver at Domäne Wachau, knows that the effort was worthwhile and that he backed the right horse: vineyards that have a future.

Because this future will be different from what people were used to in the 1980s and 90s. Warmer, drier, more extreme. Hardly anyone today would want to dispute the fact that the climate is changing, and anyone who does want to dispute it should talk to a wine producer. He will tell him what has happened in the past ten or 15 years and what the effects are: The hotter years are be-coming more frequent, the storms more dramatic, the wine producers’ worries greater. There is a fine line between drought and severe weather; anything can happen at any time. However, on the other hand, where grapes rarely ripened in the past because it was too cold or too shady – for example back there, at the upper end of the Spitzer Graben – today they develop just perfectly.

René Antrag, the sommelier at Steirereck, opens a bottle of Martin Muthentaler’s 2015 Riesling Vießlinger Stern and quickly goes into raptures as he explains: “Yes, this is exactly how it must be today: a radiant, vibrating wine from what was actually a super-hot year. Nevertheless, elegant, slender, with only twelve percent alcohol. Of course, this has to do with the location, which is very high and very cool. But that’s not all. There is no irrigation up there and cultivating the vineyards is a real challenge. The individual elements all have to gel: You need the right variety of grape, you have to do everything right in the vineyard in terms of tillage and foliage work. And you can’t afford any mistakes in the cellar. You can’t do one thing without the other. But now taste this wine. It’s just as it should be.”

Little in this world is as complex as climate, and nothing so complicated as responding to these new realities as a wine pro-ducer. No matter what or how you do it – you get it wrong at first. Because the old certainties become blurred faced with the new un-predictability of the weather. Producing wine also very often involves making mistakes. The important thing is that you learn from your mistakes and that, ideally, you don’t do things com-pletely wrong. The path to good wine often leads through compro-mise; you can’t radically change from year to year just because conditions change dramatically. Armin Tement, a wine producer in southern Styria, knows exactly what he’s talking about when he mentions these new difficulties – without even speaking of the unfortunately increasingly frequent hailstorms, against which nothing can be done. All the rest can be managed: in hot years, leave more grapes hanging on the vine to delay ripening and preserve freshness. In rainy years, remove more grapes to improve air circulation. Never anything too extreme that might throw the vines out of their long-existing balance. Because it is the equilibrium of the vineyard that counts. Armin Tement explains the basic principle: “We will experience more and more extremes, but if the vineyard is in equilibrium, it can handle these swings. One day you have to deal with a lot of precipitation, the next day with a lot of drought.

Then, at the end of the process, sometimes the wine’s pithiness is emphasized and its juiciness at other times. Both features have their qualities.” For the wine producer, of course, this means that he can no longer work according to a pattern, but has to feel his way up to the respective vintage. With the emphasis on: feel. Because every decision a wine pro-ducer makes has an enormous impact, sometimes for many years to come.

The biggest of all fundamental decisions concerns the question of which grape varieties a wine producer actually plants – and which will still be suitable for viticulture under future con-ditions. In particular, the typical Austrian varieties Zweigelt and Grüner Veltliner will probably no longer thrive everywhere in the way they used to. Armin Tement has it comparatively easy in this matter; the leading varieties of his region, especially Muskateller and Sauvignon Blanc, are coping quite well with global warming so far. A few kilometers to the west, in a site that can certainly keep up with Spitzer Graben in terms of coolness and barrenness, the 2017 Sauvignon Blanc Ried Hochsteinriegl from the Wohlmuth winery in the Sausal valley also shows this – matured for a long time, but still not opulent, because cool nights promote aroma ripening without the sugar content immediately shooting up unpleasantly. René Antrag: “This is delicate and precise, this is absolutely the future, also in terms of aging: here the wine is given time, in the cellar and then also in the bottle.”

One that usually hardly ever got the time it deserved is Welschriesling. However, that is also changing, because the good old Heurigen variety is increasingly proving to be a real model for the future. Not only in Styria is it increasingly becoming the focus of top wine producers. However, due to the fact that the variety has long suffered from a poor image, old Welsch vineyards in great locations are unfortunately rare. Armin Tement fortunately still has a Welsch vineyard, which produces his Welschriesling Weinstock Alte Reben 2014 and which shows what this variety is capable of. René Antrag is – once again – enraptured: “For me, this has the elegance of an Aligoté from Burgundy. It’s not loud, not obtrusive, it conveys the terroir, has enough tranquility due to long yeast aging, and at the same time a vibrant acidity that makes this wine in-credibly exciting. This also pairs quite nicely with delicate, elegant cuisine.”

A similar caliber, with a somehow also quite similar, yet somehow completely different story: Michael Wenzel, Furmint Garten Eden 2017. Wenzel’s Garten Eden is located on a hill above Rust, with the best view of Lake Neusiedl, where his Furmint has been a matter close to the wine producer’s heart for years. He didn’t think about the climate at first – but now he’s also right. Hardly any other variety is so well adapted to the new, so-called high Pannonian period, can cope so well with the heat and even when fully matured still appears fresh and full-bodied and rich in tannins. And yes, that is a compliment!