(Manfred Klimek)
The controversy surrounding the leading Austrian winemaker Roland Velich and his Lutzmannsburg 2023 – which was awarded 100 points by James Suckling yet met with resistance from official inspectors – appears, at first glance, to be a footnote in the world of viticulture. In reality, however, this case speaks to something much bigger. It is about power. About the authority to interpret. And about that peculiar bureaucratic establishment in Central Europe which, to this day, refuses to accept that quality is no longer defined exclusively by commissions with decades-old, rigid criteria.
For, of course, viticulture needs rules. Nobody wants to see spoiled or flawed wines bearing state quality seals. But this is precisely where the problem lies: who actually decides what constitutes a flaw? And, more importantly, according to which cultural notions is this decided?
For years, Roland Velich has been one of Austria’s highest-rated winemakers on the international stage. His Blaufränkisch wines from Lutzmannsburg regularly receive top ratings from Parker and James Suckling and are among the most important flagship wines of Austrian viticulture worldwide. This is precisely why the current conflict is so perplexing. After all, this is not about some obscure, fringe operation or amateurish ‘natural wine’ activism. Here, a producer whose wines have long been ranked amongst the very best globally is coming under pressure.
The international wine world has changed radically over the last twenty years. Acidity-driven styles, spontaneous fermentation, reductive ageing methods, minimal intervention, oxidative nuances or deliberately edgy aromas are no longer regarded in many quarters as flaws, but rather as expressions of terroir and the winemaker’s signature. At the same time, some official tasting panels still include people whose sensory training dates back to a time when wine was expected, above all, to be ‘clean’, pleasing and standardised.
The result is disheartening.
Wines that are celebrated in London, New York or Copenhagen suddenly fail to meet the standards of national testing bodies. And this is often because they do not fit into a sensory framework dating from the late 20th century. More and more winemakers are now speaking openly about precisely this – not least because the economic damage can be considerable. An internationally sought-after wine without a state quality seal suddenly comes across as an outsider product, not only in its own country.
Yet this problem, which is damaging to both culture and business, is by no means limited to Austria. Germany has also been familiar with these conflicts for years – albeit to a lesser extent. There, too, there is a deeply entrenched system of certification numbers, commissions and tasting panels, whose self-image often still dates back to a time when authorities believed they could regulate taste.
German viticulture suffers in any case from an almost chronic level of over-bureaucratisation. Hardly any other major wine-producing country regulates, classifies, tests, monitors and standardises with comparable zeal. Much of this originally arose for understandable reasons: consumer protection, assurance of origin, and quality assurance. Yet, as is so often the case in Germany, a sensible love of order gave rise to a self-perpetuating administrative apparatus which, at some point, began to take itself more seriously than the very people for whom it was originally created. The result is a wine-growing sector that, in many places, is struggling against international competition whilst at the same time being constantly bogged down by forms, assessment grids and bureaucratic mindsets.
And that is precisely why the political sphere is so interesting.
In Austria, Sepp Schellhorn now holds a position of governmental responsibility; he is not merely familiar with the hospitality and culinary sectors in theory, but understands them from day-to-day operations. You do not have to agree with every political stance Schellhorn takes to recognise that here, at least, there is someone speaking who has actually experienced the reality of restaurants, producers and guests.
Germany, by contrast, has chosen as President of the Bundestag Julia Klöckner – of all people, a former German Wine Queen who was once a political figure in the fields of agriculture and wine – without this ever having resulted in any tangible cultural-political breakthrough for viticulture. It is almost tragicomic.
Yet it is precisely the wine-growing sector that needs political voices today who understand that quality is no longer defined solely by official tasting reports. The world of taste has become more open, more international and more pluralistic. Young consumers have long been less interested in state certification numbers than in provenance, credibility and personality.
This does not mean that every trendy misstep in winemaking must suddenly be declared a cultural asset. Of course, there are also poor wines, sloppy cellar work and sensory nonsense. But that is precisely why we need assessors driven by curiosity rather than mere routine. People who want to understand developments, rather than reflexively rejecting them.
For the real scandal does not lie in a wine failing a test on one occasion. The real scandal lies in state systems beginning to systematically stifle aesthetic developments because their institutions remain mentally stuck in a different era.
And it seems that wine regulation in particular reveals something very Central European: a deep-seated fear of losing control. Major wine-producing countries such as France or Italy often operate in a more chaotic, contradictory and sometimes even riskier manner. Germany and Austria, on the other hand, traditionally rely on commissions, stamps and licences.
This works brilliantly as long as the world stands still.
But the world simply no longer stands still.