Throughout recorded history the southern part of Tyrol has been of enormous strategic importance as the confluence of three important Alpine routes connecting Italy with northern Europe. There is evidence that the early inhabitants made the transformation from hunter-gatherers to farmers long before the Roman conquest of the region in 15 BC and when they arrived the Romans found an advanced wine culture. South Tyrol became part of the Roman Alpine province of Rhaetia and its wines soon became notorious in Rome, especially after the route Via Claudia Augusta was built connecting central Italy with northern Europe. It passed Tramin and Kaltern, leading to the north-west via the Vinschgau valley. It was reported by the Roman historian Pliny that Rhaetian wine was stored and transported in wooden containers held together by iron hoops at a time when the ancient Greeks and Romans were still using earthenware amphoras or leather bag-like containers. After the fall of the western Roman Empire the region became populated by Goths and Langobards and from the 8th century onwards religious establishments in southern Germany began to acquire woodland, clear it and plant vines. The bishop of Freising in Bavaria acquired vineyards near Bozen in 720 AD and from then on it was the Church which furthered wine-growing in these sunny valleys. Wine was used both in the celebration of the Mass and as a source of calories and soon became an important trading commodity between north and south. Eventually 12 bishoprics and over 40 monasteries in southern Germany owned vineyards in South Tyrol.

South Tyrol’s wines were mentioned in numerous medieval documents: an edict of Emperor Charles IV counted ‘Poczener’ (wine from Bozen) among the Holy Roman Empire’s five best wines and a land register at the monastery of Tegernsee (Bavaria) mentions Muskateller, Vernatsch and Lagrein as the best wines at that time. Traminer wine was mentioned in 1361 when it was served during the meeting between Duke Rudolf of Austria and Meinhard III of Tyrol. South Tyrol became part of Austria in 1363 and with the exception of a brief period during the Napoleonic Wars it remained so until 1919. It was during the Napoleonic Wars that the name ‘Alto Adige’ first emerged in 1810, referring to the Adige Valley north of Verona. It was later resurrected in 1919 as the official Italian name of South Tyrol.
Vineyards were secularised in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the first wine merchants appeared around 1840. The opening of the Brenner railway during the 1860s provided an enormous boost to wine trading with other parts of Austria.
When the phylloxera appeared at the end of the 19th century South Tyrol’s wine industry was well prepared, though once the epidemic had been overcome the next disaster struck in the form of the annexation of the southern part of Tyrol by Italy in 1919. In one blow the region was severed from its traditional markets in Austria and Germany and had to fight competition on its new home market, Italy, one of the world’s largest wine producing nations.
A period of renewed stability began after World War II, though unfortunately a large number of producers began working in pursuit of quantity rather than quality. High yielding clones of the traditional Vernatsch vine were planted, which by the 1970s accounted for well over half of South Tyrol’s wine production. Lagrein, the region’s premium native red variety was used above all to add colour to these anaemic wines rather than to make rich and structured red wine in its own right. To make matters worse, numerous wineries in South Tyrol had become mere processing plants for commercial Italian wines destined for German speaking markets. Vineyard yields soared. In the early years of the 20th century an annual average of 300,000 to 350,000 hectolitres of wine were produced from 9100 hectares of vineyard. By 1970, in years with abundant grape harvests, up to 700,000 hectolitres were produced from a vineyard area which had contracted to 5400 hectares. Exports to Austria, Germany and Switzerland had also risen to over 800,000 hectolitres, though the greater part was cheap wine from elsewhere in Italy.
Inevitably these practices had a detrimental effect both on the image of South Tyrolean wine and on grape prices. During the 1980s prices for South Tyrolean fruit increased rapidly and it soon became far more profitable for growers to produce apples. Vineyards in some of the finest sites were grubbed up and converted into orchards and today South Tyrol accounts for 10 percent of total European Union apple production while its wine production is a tiny 0.2 percent of the EU total.