The story of modern Austrian wine begins with a chemistry lesson. Diethylene glycol is a clear odourless liquid which will mix with water, alcohol or ether. You can use it as a disinfectant or as antifreeze in your car. You can sweeten food with it too, but you shouldn’t, because diethylene glycol is also a poison. It kills by causing kidney failure.

Austrian wines, like German wines, used to be classed according to their sweetness. But Austria’s climate and terrain are less suited than Germany’s to making sweet wine. So at some point in the late 1970s a few Austrian producers began to cheat. They added small amounts of diethylene glycol to their wine to make it taste sweeter and richer. Read the rest of this entry »