The Association of Austrian Traditional Wine Estates (Österreichischer Traditionsweingüter) enters into Cooperation with Slow Food and Arche Noah
WeinGARTEN-plus – Fine Products From and For Nature

Back in the olden days, when most of the vineyards in Austria were owned and cultivated by small farms, monoculture was not the norm because of the need to earn money: often planted between the rows of grapevines were a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs, such as horseradish, garlic, strawberries, onions, tomatoes and red currants.

At the edges of the rows – and quite often in between them – a wide range of fruit trees were planted: peach, cherry, nut (including almond), quince and plum. This meant that the wine-growing areas yielded not only grapes, but also other fresh fruits for eating throughout the year, and especially for snacking during the long working hours in the vineyards.

Over the last several decades, however, the areas have been used more and more intensively for wine-growing only, especially because of the mechanization of wine-growing in general. In the Danube valley today, there are approximately 10, 000 hectares of vineyards that are, for the most part, cultivated monoculturally. As a result, the flowering period is now shorter - limited to around three weeks - which means that the activity period for insects is shorter as well. This underscores the fact that it is important for micro-organisms, which are responsible for loosening the soil, to have an assortment of plants present.

With this in mind, Slow Food developed the WeinGARTEN-plus concept, which focuses on returning vineyards to a garden-like environment. In turn, the Association of Austrian Traditional Wine Estates adopted this idea and is now, in cooperation with the Arche Noah association in Schiltern, Lower Austria, making it a reality. Long-traditional vineyard plants are once again being sewn along the rows of vines, and already around 500 fruit trees have been planted in the vineyards. With the cooperation of Arche Noah, the majority of the plants and seeds selected are of old, traditional and endangered varieties.

Already during the first year, more than 120 newly planted vineyard peach, quince and apricot trees opened their Spring blossoms. And once again, the insects and micro-organisms began finding an attractive habitat in which to live. Because the biodiversity of fauna and flora are encouraged, a better balance is achieved throughout the year.

But the cooperation goes even further: the vineyard fruits are processed by local manufacturers and sold as premium products - such as garlic pesto, quince cheese, herb salt and peach jam – in a WeinGARTEN-plus box. The box is available for € 25 at all member wineries of the Association of Austrian Traditional Wine Estates as well as from the cheese producer Robert Paget. From each sale of a box, € 5 will go toward supporting Slow Food activities.

On the occasion of the Austrian Slow Food fair - the Terra Madre – which will take place October 13th - 15th 2011 in Vienna's City Hall (Wiener Rathaus ), the Association of Austrian Traditional Wine Estates will present their

WeinGARTEN products as well as wines from their top vineyard sites:

www.terramadre.at
www.slowfoodaustria.at
www.arche-noah.at

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