Can't you just see yourself, on a ship cruising the Danube from one charming Austrian wine town to another, sipping their world-class wines while wondering how you ever got so lucky? This is a possible dream, the more so because the Danube and many wine towns it connects -- Krems, Spitz, etc. -- are so close to Vienna, itself one of Austria's four main wine regions.
I sampled many again last month at several outstanding Austrian wineries in Niederosterreich (Lower Austria), Burgenland and Steiermark (Styria), three of Austria's four major wine-producing regions. The fourth, Vienna, has suburbs with more than 700 hectares of vineyards.
Most prominent among Austria's wine-producing appellations is Wachau, lying in the Niederosterreich region (Austria's largest) surrounding Vienna. If you're already in Vienna, then Wachau lies just to the west, its rocky breast thrusting upward from the Danube. An important part of Austria's winemaking success story since the 1990s are the extremely high-quality Wachau wines from a historic, legally protected segment of steep, terraced vineyards between the wine towns of Melk and Krems.