More than 300 wine experts from 30 countries participated in the ÖTW Single Vineyard Summit 2025. There were 97 from the sommelier and gastronomy sectors, 117 from the trade, 20 from the education sector and 72 specialised journalists. They tasted 309 ÖTW Erste Lage wines and another 250 of the best from the partner regions, including the long-awaited premiere of 13 ÖTW wineries from the Weinviertel region, which presented their Erste Lage (Premier Cru) wines.
The Weinviertel is Austria's northernmost wine-growing region with clearly defined borders: the Manhartsberg mountain ridge is in the west, the Danube in the south, the Austrian-Czech border along the north and east. It is the home of peppery wines made from Grüner Veltliner. The winemakers themselves served the wines and talked to the tasters, and this is one of the main reasons why this summit is in the world calendar of the wine industry.
The Austrians had an antifreeze affair 40 years ago. Some winemakers were fixing their wines with diethylene glycol, a toxic, colorless liquid with a sweet taste that is similar to ethylene glycol, which is popularly known as antifreeze. When the affair was discovered, they hit rock bottom. Exports fell to zero, and Austrians didn't flock to wine shops to buy their own wine either. The authorities introduced strict rules for wine production and even stricter controls. They founded the parastatal Austrian Wine Marketing with winemakers, and today they are 15th in the world in terms of the quantity of wine produced, with 270 million liters per year, and have been at the top in terms of quality for latest two decades.
