The Weinviertel, the Wine Quarter, occupies the whole northeast corner of Lower Austria, from the Danube up to the Czech border and east to the March river and Slovakia. It is by far the largest Austrian wine region, roughly a third of the country's vineyard, spread over gentle hills and open farmland rather than dramatic slopes, with villages of whitewashed cellar lanes dug into the loess.

In 2002 it became the first Austrian DAC, a system borrowed from the Romance countries that ties a name to a style rather than simply to a place. Weinviertel DAC means dry Grüner Veltliner with the peppery, radish like bite the region is known for, and nothing else qualifies. Beyond that rule the region grows a great deal else, Welschriesling, Riesling and Zweigelt among them, and the far north around Retz is warm and dry enough for decent red.