Soils · five families, one more when Slovenia joins
What the vine is standing on.
The layer most wine sites skip, and the one that most clearly explains why a Riesling from Lower Silesian granite and one from Kraków limestone are different wines. Select a column; its regions light on the map.
Soil families
Loess · where it dominates
Regions on the road
Elsewhere along the road
Małopolska, Lubelskie, Znojmo, Wachau, Kamptal, Slavonia
What loess gives the wine
Loess is the dust of the ice age: silt blown off retreating glaciers and settled in deep, soft beds along the great rivers. It warms early, drains quickly, and holds just enough water to carry a vine through a dry August. Wines from loess tend to be round and fruit-forward, with aromatics that open fast and acidity that stays polite.
In Poland it underlies Sandomierz, the Vistula Gorge and much of Małopolska; in Austria it is the ground of the Wachau terraces and the Kamptal; in Moravia it blankets the granite at Znojmo.