Evoe! German and Austrian Sekt Report

BY ANNE KREBIEHL MW | MARCH 21, 2024

“Evoe!” is the ecstatic, inebriated cry of the Maenads, followers of Dionysus, as they dance and drink with abandon. It is also the name a German winemaker gave to his Sekt. I salute his spirit and wit, especially considering how these merry and seemingly ‘out of control’ women have been portrayed over centuries, striking either fear or excitement into male hearts and minds. For this report, this joyful exclamation and sense of purpose is apt. At long last, this once illustrious category of wine is in full revival mode. Much is happening in the world of Sekt, or sparkling wine, both in Germany and Austria.

Maenads by John Collier (1850-1934), Southwark Heritage Centre, London, UK, Creative Commons License.

The Term Sekt

The word Sekt simply means “sparkling wine” in German and thus covers any wine with bubbles, but this inaugural Sekt report focuses on wines fermented in bottle. As a mother-tongue German speaker who has lived abroad all her adult life, I rejoice that there is finally a German wine word that is easy to spell, remember and pronounce. However, my fellow Germans have struggled with the term. The history of Sekt, detailed later, means that the word was once commonly associated with the gallons of cheap, tank-fermented, slightly sweet bubbles made on a truly industrial scale in Germany’s (and to a lesser degree in Austria’s) Sektkellereien, or large Sekt producers. Today, Sekt has come full circle, as both Germany and Austria are seeing the first real flowering of traditional method Sekt.

21st Century Rehabilitation

Austria founded its Sektkomitee in 2013 and created a new legal framework for Sekt in 2016. Germany began legally defining terms like Winzersekt, i.e., Sekt made by a winegrower from estate-grown grapes, in the 1980s and linked this to bottle-fermentation. They later even defined the French term Crémant in German law, as the word Sekt was not seen as sufficiently classy for a bottle-fermented wine. Years had to pass before Sekt was no longer a dirty word. By the time the famous Reichsrat von Buhl estate in the Pfalz managed the huge scoop of hiring Champagne Bollinger’s former cellarmaster, Mathieu Kauffmann, in 2013 as their chief winemaker, German Sekt was already fizzing away below the surface. However, this hire and its well-orchestrated marketing campaign brought the idea of bottle-fermented, even fine, Sekt into fuller public consciousness. Finally, the time was ripe for good German Sekt. Thus, 2013 was a key year for Sekt in Austria and Germany. The intervening decade has been immense for fine Sekt in both countries.