Austria

The tradition

What cider making here is, on its own terms — the fruit it uses, the shape of the drink, and the part it plays.

• In Austria Most means the fermented drink, not the unfermented must, and in its heartland it usually means a pear drink or a pear-and-apple blend rather than an apple one.
• The Mostviertel of Lower Austria carries one of the largest concentrations of fermentation pears anywhere, grown as full standards over grazed pasture; Upper Austria and parts of Styria continue the same system at lower profile.
• The drink is dry, cloudy, firm and tannic, and its continental fruit gives it more sugar and more weight than an Atlantic perry made from comparable pears.
• The Mostheuriger — a seasonal tavern where a producer serves their own drink with cold food — is the characteristic social setting, modelled on the Austrian wine Heuriger.
• The modern sector is a deliberate reconstruction: producer associations, an awarded title, a signed route and wine-format bottling repositioned a declining farm drink from the 1990s onwards.
• Styria, the country’s main apple province, grows fruit for the table rather than the vat, and its Most is a farm activity rather than a regional style.

How cider is defined and taxed here

A legal definition is not a description of good practice. It sets the floor a drink must clear to be sold under the word, and the floor is in a different place in every country — which is why the same label term can mean two quite different things either side of a border.

• Austria regulates fermented fruit drinks inside its wine law. The Weingesetz 2009 is titled as an act on the trade in wine and fruit wine, and the Obstweinverordnung made under it — BGBl. II Nr. 18/2014, amended 2018 and 2022 — is the operative instrument. There is no Codex chapter for fruit wine; the ordinance is where the rules are.
• The word Most is legally defined, and it means the fermented drink. Under § 3 of the ordinance, pome fruit wine is to be designated Obstwein, Obstmost or Most, and the fruit name may be compounded with Wein — or, for pome fruit, with Most — which is what makes Birnmost a lawful trade name. Unfermented juice is a different legal product under fruit-juice law, called Süßmost.
• The compositional requirements tighten as the geographical claim narrows, which is the structural feature to understand. Labelled only Österreich, a fruit wine needs 1.2 % vol and 4.0 g/l titratable acid, may be made from concentrate if it says so, may be watered within an extract limit, and may show slight faults such as a haze. Name a federal state and the floors rise to 5.0 % vol and 5.0 g/l acid, water and concentrate are both banned, and the drink must be free of faults in appearance — expressly, no haze.
• Four cultivars are named in the legislation itself for a lower acid floor of 4.0 g/l: Lavanttaler Bananenapfel, Champagnerbirn, Speckbirne and Schweizer Wasserbirne. Two of them are perry pears, and the concession exists because those fruits do not naturally reach the general minimum. Very few countries name individual cultivars in drinks law at all.
• Sweetness is a statutory ladder rather than a producer’s adjective: extratrocken at 4 g/l or less, trocken at 4 g/l — or 9 g/l where the acid is at least equal to the sugar — halbtrocken to 18 g/l, lieblich or halbsüß from 18 to 45 g/l, süß above 45 g/l. Separate ladders apply to the semi-sparkling and sparkling categories.
• Sulphur dioxide is capped at 50 mg/l free under the permitted-treatments article. Carbon dioxide may be added to a still fruit wine only up to 2 g/l; Obstperlwein runs 1.0 to 2.5 bar at 20 °C on at least 5 % vol, and Obstschaumwein needs at least 3.0 bar and may reach it by adding gas. Zider is a defined category of its own: juice blended with fruit wine of the same fruit group, to 5 % vol and 2.5 bar. The word Sekt may not be used.
• A cultivar may be named on the label only at 85 % or more of the drink, and several cultivars only where nothing else is in it; a vintage needs 85 % of the fruit from that year. This is the legal basis of the Mostviertel’s single-varietal habit.
• Qualitätsobstwein carries a state test number and must name a geography smaller than a federal state. The analysis behind the number is run at Eisenstadt or at Klosterneuburg. Producers making more than 600 litres must notify the federal cellar inspectorate of the quantity.
• No protected designation covers any Austrian fermented drink. The EU register holds Pöllauer Hirschbirne as a protected fruit and Bodensee pear brandy as a spirit, and Mostviertler Birnmost — registered in 2011 — was cancelled in 2018. Austria protects its perry pear as fruit and as brandy, and its perry not at all.
• Regulatory text read from the federal cellar inspectorate’s mirror of the consolidated ordinance, because the Austrian legal information system refuses automated requests. Quality standards in the Mostviertel above the legal floor remain private: a producer association sets criteria and awards a title, which is a voluntary framework rather than a designation.

Cider and perry in Austria

Regions

The cider-making areas recorded within this country. Where an area has sub-regions, they are named on its card.

• Region

  Mostviertel

  The south-western quarter of Lower Austria, where standard perry pear trees stand over grazed pasture on a scale found almost nowhere else, and where Most means a dry pear drink rather than an apple one.

• Steiermark

  Styria

  Austria’s main apple-growing province, where the crop is grown in modern intensive orchards for eating and juicing and where the fermented drink is a small farm activity rather than the region’s purpose.

• Oberösterreich

  Upper Austria

  The Austrian province west of the Mostviertel, where the same pear and apple Most tradition continues through the Innviertel and Hausruck country at a lower profile and on smaller holdings.

Styles made here

Categories whose definition or characteristic practice belongs to this country.

• Dry cider

  Cider fermented out or finished so that little fermentable sugar remains, leaving acid, tannin and alcohol to carry the palate.

• Perry

  The fermented drink of pears, a tradition parallel to cider rather than derived from it, in which unfermentable sorbitol leaves a sweetness the maker never chose.

• Most

  The farmhouse fermented fruit drink of Austria and southern Germany, made from apples, pears or both, and belonging to a meadow-orchard landscape as much as to a recipe.

• Still perry

  Perry without carbonation, in which the fruit’s sorbitol sweetness and its texture carry a drink that has no bubble to lean on.

• Apple wine

  A fermented apple drink made to wine strength, usually by raising the starting gravity, and presented and taxed as a wine rather than as a cider.

• Birnenmost

  Mostviertel Birnenmost

  Austrian pear Most from the Mostviertel, made from the region’s tannic standard-tree perry pears, in which sorbitol leaves a soft sweetness no fermentation removes.

What people ask next

Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.

• What is perry — Perry is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the juice of pears, traditionally of specific perry pear cultivars rather than eating pears. It is to pears what cider is to apples, and has its own history in the three counties of England and in Normandy.
• What is still perry
• What is the difference between cider and apple wine
• Why does my dry cider still taste sweet — Alcohol, glycerol and ripe fruit aroma all read as sweetness even when no sugar remains. High alcohol in particular is perceived as sweet before it is perceived as strong.
• What is most the drink — In Austria, southern Germany and Switzerland *Most* is fermented apple or pear juice — the local cider. Confusingly, *Süßmost* is the unfermented juice, so the word alone does not tell you whether there is alcohol in the glass.

Where to go next

• All cider regions and countries — The other traditions, grouped by the family each belongs to.
• Protected designations — Every reserved name on CiderHQ, grouped by country.
• Styles — What defines each category, and what legitimately varies inside it.

Sources

What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.

• European Cider and Fruit Wine Association (AICV)

  AICV · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24

• eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register

  European Commission · designation authority · registered as competent for this subject

  The single authoritative register of EU PDO, PGI and TSG names, carrying each product specification. Cider and perry designations across France, Spain and elsewhere resolve here.

• Research on pear juice composition and sorbitol in perry

  Various journals and institute reports · peer-reviewed literature · registered as competent for this subject

  The evidence base for the single most important chemical difference between cider and perry: pears carry substantial sorbitol, which yeast does not ferment, so a fully fermented perry retains sweetness a fully fermented cider cannot.

• Obstweinverordnung, BGBl. II Nr. 18/2014, consolidated

  Republic of Austria, made under §§ 35, 36 and 37(1) of the Weingesetz 2009; consolidated text published by the Bundeskellereiinspektion · legislation · passage verified 2026-08-25

  The instrument that decides what Most legally is in Austria, and the answer is: a fermented drink. That single fact is the one most often got wrong in English writing, because Most means the unfermented juice in Switzerland and is ambiguous in Germany. The ordinance also names two pear cultivars individually — Speckbirne and Schweizer Wasserbirne — in a derogation lowering their minimum acidity, which is a legislature encoding pomology. Retrieved from the federal cellar inspectorate’s mirror because the Austrian legal information system refused every automated request.

• Österreichische Mostbirnensorten

  Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Klima- und Umweltschutz, Regionen und Wasserwirtschaft (BMLUK), register of traditional Austrian foods, entry 191 · government · retrieved 2026-08-25

  The Austrian agriculture ministry’s own account of its perry pears, in its register of traditional foods. It carries no analytical figures at all — no acid, no sugar, no tannin — and is cited here for synonymy, geography, dates and the ministry’s own descriptions of what the fruit tastes like. Its estimate of over 400 Mostbirne types in Austria is labelled by the ministry itself as an estimate, and CiderHQ repeats that hedge rather than the number alone.

• Prüfung ausgewählter Mostbirnensorten als Spindel unter Bio-Produktionsbedingungen

  Wurm, Gössinger, Wendelin and Korntheuer, HBLA und Bundesamt für Wein- und Obstbau Klosterneuburg, in Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg 61 (2011): 236–246 · research institute · passage verified 2026-08-25 · covers 2002–2010

  Fourteen Austrian perry pears trialled at the research station that also runs Austria’s statutory fruit-wine analysis panel. The only measured Austrian Mostbirnen data CiderHQ has found, and the first Austrian figures on the site. Its tables are scanned images with no text layer, so every figure published here was read from the rendered pages directly rather than from an extraction, and the source’s own typesetting error — Knollbirne’s residual sugar printed “3,o” — is recorded rather than normalised. The acid convention is tartaric rather than malic, which is Austrian wine law and is stated on every measurement taken from it.

• eAmbrosia geographical indications register, queried through its data interface

  European Commission, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development · regulator · passage verified 2026-08-25

  Registered separately from the eAmbrosia landing page because the two are not the same evidence. The public register is a client-side application that returns an empty shell to any automated request, which is why CiderHQ’s existing eu-ambrosia record has always been a pointer rather than a reading. The interface behind it returns the complete register — 4,011 entries on 25 August 2026 — with each name’s type, status, EU protection date and file number, and it is what every registration date on this site was checked against. Two findings came out of that sweep: Euskal Sagardoa is recorded as applied rather than registered, nine years after filing; and Sidra da Madeira exists and was missing from this site.