Vienna Woods Private Hiking Tour

This Vienna Woods Private Hiking Tour (medium difficulty) is ideal for energetic and curious travelers, who would like to experience also another facet of Vienna, the Vienna Woods, the House Mountain of the capital. It is an outdoor activity with a beautiful view of Vienna and the Danube, where you also learn about the city’s wine cultivation. Vienna is the only European capital which cultivates wine within its boundaries and the vineyards on the slopes of the Vienna Woods are part of the city’s landscape.

We will take public transportation to get to the starting point. First we will walk on a rather steep, but paved footpath up to Leopoldsberg from where we will have a good view of Vienna and the majestic abbey of Klosterneuburg, a place, connected with the early period of the Duchy of Austria. We will continue on a comfortable path through the forest to the next hill, Kahlenberg. Then we will start descending between the hilly vineyards and will end the tour in Grinzing, Vienna’s best-known wine village, dotted with taverns (Heuriger), where local wine and food is offered. A hungry and thirsty hiker might like to have a bite with some Viennese wine! You can get back to the city centre by public transportation.

Bring comfortable shoes, camera, water and tickets for public transportation.

The Vienna Woods (Wienerwald) form the easternmost part of the Alps. The mountain group is located in Lower Austria and Vienna. The Nasenweg (nose path), under Kahlenberg in Vienna, is the northern end of the Alps. The region is hilly. Geologically, the majority of the Vienna Woods belongs to the Flysch Alps (mainly sandstone), while the south-east belongs to the Limestone Alps.

The highest elevation in the Vienna Woods is Schöpfl 893 m a. s. l.. The highest hill in Vienna’s municipal area is Hermannskogel (542 m) with the Habsburgwarte.

There are some important monasteries in the Vienna Woods:

• Heiligenkreuz Abbey on the Via Sacra
• Kleinmariazell Monastery
• Klosterneuburg Abbey
• Mauerbach Charterhouse

The major river in the Vienna Woods is the Vienna river, from which the capital of Austria gets its name. In the north, the Vienna Woods have 77% deciduous forests (mainly beech, oak and hornbeam), in the southeast about 46% coniferous forests (pine, spruce, black pine, fir and larch).
Wine is grown in the eastern part of the Vienna Woods. Growing wine on the hills of the Vienna Woods has been practiced for more than 2,000 years. The Celts and Romans already cultivated vineyards and produced wine. Typical types of wine are the Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. The Viennese specialty is the so called Gemischter Satz. It is a blend of several different varieties of grapes, from the same vineyard, harvested and processed at the same time. Every winemaker presses their own Gemischter Satz and offers it in his Heuriger.