Zweigelt is a red wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 grape variety developed in 1922, at the Federal Institute for Viticulture

Viticulture

Viticulture is the science, production and study of grapes which deals with the series of events that occur in the vineyard. When the grapes are used for winemaking, it is also known as viniculture...

 and Pomology

Pomology

Pomology is a branch of botany that studies and cultivates pome fruit, particularly from the genera Malus, Prunus and Pyrus belonging to the Rosaceae. The term is sometimes applied more broadly, to the cultivation of any type of fruit...

 at Klosterneuburg

Klosterneuburg

Klosterneuburg is an attractive small town in Lower Austria, Austria with a population of 24,442.It is located on the Danube, immediately north of Vienna, from which it is separated by the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg hills...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, by Fritz Zweigelt. It was a crossing of St. Laurent

St. Laurent (grape)

St. Laurent is a highly aromatic dark-skinned wine grape variety of the same family as Pinot Noir, originating in France....

 and Blaufränkisch

Blaufränkisch

Blaufränkisch is a dark-skinned variety of grape used for red wine. Blaufränkisch, which is a late-ripening variety gives red wines which are typically rich in tannin and may exhibit a pronounced spicy character...

. It is now the most widely-grown red grape variety in Austria, as well as having some presence in Canada's vineyards. In 2008, Austrian plantations stood at 6512 hectares (16,091.5 acre), and have expanded in the 2000s as a part of general red wine trend in Austria.

Wine regions

Widely planted in Austria, vines have made inroads in the Canadian wine regions of Ontario's Niagara Peninsula and of British Columbia, with limited plantings in Hungary. In the Czech Republic it is known as Zweigeltrebe and is the third most widely planted red grape variety, comprising approximately 4.7% of total vineyards. It grows in most of the wine regions in Slovakia. , newly-established Belgian and Polish vineyards have also started to plant Zweigelt.

Synonyms

Zweigelt is also known as Rotburger (not to be confused with Rotberger

Rotberger

Rotberger is a wine grape variety. Its parentage is not known with certainty but it is thought to be from a cross of Trollinger and Riesling grapes). Dr. Heinrich Birk produced the cross at the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute in 1928. It is used to produce fruity, early maturing light red...

), Zweigeltrebe, and Blauer Zweigelt.