New EU Vineyard System

According to Johannes Schmuckenschlager, president of the Austrian Wine Growers Association: “It is well known that the EU has adopted a new vineyard regime that focuses on the moderate development of European viticulture. The previous vineyard quota system will be replaced by an authorisation system. This means that in the future, the same surface area of vineyards that had been grubbed up can be planted again, and any new vineyard area would need special planting authorisation. However, each country can permit no more than 1% of its winegrowing area for new plantations. In Austria, it has been a fact for years that vintners – for example from wineries declining in operation – had continuously grubbed up vineyards, most of which have never been re-planted. Therefore it can be assumed that, under the new system, Austria's total vineyard surface area will remain relatively constant. So we will approve in Austria new plantations that are the equivalent of up to 1% of the existing total vineyard surface area in order to ensure that our production potential remains the same in the long term.”

According to EU market regulations, the management of the vineyard register in the future must be carried out through an integrated administration and control system (IACS – which is known in Austria as InVeKoS). The Austrian federal states with viticulture - each of which are, for the time being, responsible for managing their own vineyard registries - will have to utilise the IACS system in the future; the system was established in Austria as InVeKoS by the Agrarmarkt Austria (AMA). The implementation of this project of course requires an appropriate lead and execution time. Its legal basis is to be created in sync with the wine law amendment currently under evaluation.

The main difference between the new system (IACS-integrated) and the previous vineyard register system is that the new system is based on the management of the actual cultivated area - a net area system. The previous vineyard register system, applied through the regional/district administrative authorities, usually meant working with gross area system – which recorded also uncultivated areas such as embankments, fields and borders, and bush growth locations. With the new system, calculations will be made according to the actual grapevine-planted vineyard surface only.
Through the electronic Austria-wide management of the viticultural potential, statistics on, for example, the age of the grapevines and the distribution of grape varieties, can be acquired with just the click of a button.