Look a Little Deeper

As wine grows more popular in Asia, the market has blossomed from highly conservative to increasingly adventurous. Even exotic regions like Georgia and Greece are gaining favour here. Yet some famous wine areas of Central Europe still get scant attention.

For the sake of simplicity (and eschewing controversy), by Central Europe, I mean most of what lies between France and the former USSR—Germany, certainly, as well as Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. That might also include the Balkans and possibly Switzerland. It’s a region with a difficult history: carved up, horse traded, fluid in identity, but rich with the syncretic potential that frequently arises in borderlands.

Let’s set Germany aside because it has arguably already wooed Asian markets with its riesling, either semi-sweet and quaffable, or ultra-luxurious and collectable like Keller’s pricey G-Max or the botrytis wines of Egon Müller and JJ Prüm. Austrian wine, by contrast,