Austria has some of the best sweet wines on earth, from one of the most remarkable places in the world for botrytis-affected wine - the Neusiedlersee, a shallow warm steppe lake of about 60 square miles, located in the warmest part of Austria, straddling the Austro-Hungarian border. The lake's micro-climate is key to the wine's production; the environment around it is flat, marshy, and humid, and nowhere else, with the possible exception of Hungary's Tokajhegyalja, does the noble rot, Botrytis Cinerea, attack grapes so reliably. Here are made wonderful Auslese, Beerenauslese (BA), Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA), Schilfwein made from grapes dried on straw or reed beds, and obscure noble Ausbruch wines, which are exotic, full, luscious, and which go on forever. Also here, and from elsewhere in Austria, are found magnificent Eisweins.  These sweet wines are simply amazing, and if you're an afficianado of dessert wines, and you have not tasted Austrian sweet wines, they are screaming out to be tried.

Grapes for these sweet wines tend to be grown on the narrow strip of land between the water's edge and the lakeside road, as it is here that the Botrytis cinerea fungus attacks the grapes reliably in most years; cross the road and it is much less reliable, so grapes for dry reds and whites are grown further from the lake shore.  TBAs and Ausbruch are incredibly long-lived wines; 30-40 years is generally not unusual, and one of our suppliers, reckons some will go 100 years. These truly are some of the finest dessert wines made in the entire world.

We include in our range wines from some well-known makers, but also a handful of producers who are barely known outside Austria yet who deserve better recognition.

Our suppliers are Heidi Schröck (Rust), Josef Lentsch (Podersdorf), Melitta and Matthias Leitner (Gols), Franz Klein and Gerhard Nekowitsch, both of Illmitz, and the Freigut (Thallern, in Thermenregion) for their Eiswein.