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Austria's wine
culture may be considerably more ancient than hitherto assumed.
Experts with Vienna's Forestry Commission are challenging the widely
held view that wine was brought to Vienna by the Romans.
The forestry
experts believe that there were wild vineries long before the Romans.
Apparently, finds from the Neolithic age show that wild grapes were
collected before the Romans ever came to the area.
After
investigating various climbing plants in Lobau National Park, the
Forestry Commission had found wild wine in addition to several other
native creepers. Together, the creepers often form an impenetrable
thicket at the edge of the forest, which can be life-threatening for
young trees. For this reason, such plants have long been exterminated
as weeds, say the experts. Wild wine, too, was often cleared because
it was confused with the other creepers.
Today, native
wild wines are virtually extinct in large parts of Central Europe.
Now, the forestry experts intend to tend to wild wine again, because
in their opinion, it represents the pre-Roman archetype of today's
cultivated vineyard vines. In the Lobau park, there are still about a
hundred sites where wild wine continues to thrive.
The Austrian
biologists have even succeeded in growing young plants from the
berries of these vines. This spring, the young plants are to be
planted at select locations in the National Park, to secure the
continued survival of the species.
Source:
National Park Forestry Commission Lobau |
