Austria is modernizing their coffee culture

Posted on: 2017-01-19 3:12 PM

If there’s one thing most visitors want to do in Vienna—after seeing imperial palaces or contemporary art, at least—it’s visit a coffee house. There's Café Central with its gothic arches, under which Freud, Lenin, and Trotsky used to debate the news of the day with fellow intellectuals; or Café Landtmann, one of the lavish coffee houses on the Ringstrasse, which was once wall-to-wall with them. Café Hawelka, tucked away down a side street in the Innere Stadt, looks like it hasn’t changed décor since its 1939 opening. They’re all on the list.
 
Unfortunately, if there’s one thing most visitors agree on, it’s that the coffee in the traditional places really isn’t that great.
 
“It’s a hideous embarrassment to me,” says Oliver Goetz, co-owner of local roasters Alt Wien Kaffee. “Visitors say, ‘We thought Vienna had a coffee culture, but it’s horrible.’ So we always say that Vienna has a coffee house culture but not a coffee culture. We have beautiful coffee houses—architectural gems that reek of history, where famous composers and the literati have sat and done their stuff—but the coffee is horrible.”
 
Luckily, all that’s beginning to change. The third wave coffee movement, which focuses on origins and sustainability as well as a better taste, has reached Vienna and is swiftly gathering pace. First came the micro-roasters about five years ago, then the new breed of coffee shop. Today, Vienna’s third wave venues have mushroomed—not just in the outer districts like hipster Neubau, but in the venerable Innere Stadt, where CaffèCouture, a small-batch roaster in the Ferstel Passage shares the same palatial location as Café Central, and micro-roastery pop-up Süssmund’s in a former supermarket is set to move in the next few months to a still-undisclosed permanent location.
 
The third edition of the Vienna Coffee Festival, which took place this past weekend in the vast Ottakringer Brewery complex, is a testament to the movement’s growth. Last year, it rented two rooms; this edition took over the entire brewery, with more than 80 exhibitors offering tasters and selling their wares to both industry and the public. “Vienna has a history of coffee, but history isn’t the same as quality,” festival organizer Günther Gapp tells Condé Nast Traveler over an espresso martini (the bar Heuer am Karlsplatz had installed a pop-up next to the “latte art” zone). “But so much is changing in Vienna.”
 
It’s a change of mindset, as much as of beverage. Vienna’s coffee house culture is UNESCO-listed for its atmosphere: In a traditional venue, you sit at a marble table, are served coffee on a tray with a complimentary glass of water, and can stay as long as you like without any pressure to order anything else. Coats are hung on elegant racks; newspapers are piled up for clients to read; table service is the only option. “Life revolves around coffee houses,” says Ernst Naber, the fourth generation of the family that founded Naber Kaffee in 1908. “Discussions, negotiations, and meetings—they’re all done here.”
 
What the new wave coffee houses add in quality, however, they lack in atmosphere. At Kaffemik, a small bar that curates roasts from around Europe, the clientele perches around three tables, while with its high stools and buzzy atmosphere, Balthasar—owned by a former chef turned master barista—serves excellent coffee that lends itself well to a grab-and-go. Nikolaus Hartmann of Süssmund reckons people don’t stay as long at his pop-up as they would at a traditional coffee house—the modern chairs aren’t as comfortable, he admits—yet there are other draws. He has a mind-blowing array of china cups in which he serves his coffee, a different type for every kind of drink. “You don’t just taste with your taste buds, but with sound, visuals, and touch, too,” he says. He saves the classic white cups for his espressos (the color increases bitterness, he says, but since he only uses single origin, his coffee generally tastes sweeter anyway); pour-overs are in colored cups, while cappuccinos are served in Danish ceramic bowls with gold spoons on the side.
 
Vienna has taken a while to get behind the third wave movement—Hartmann only abandoned his career as an architect to start roasting in 2014—but the tide is turning. “If there’s one thing that Viennese people hate. It’s change,” says Goetz, who offers free tastings of Alt Wien’s more modern coffees whenever he sells a traditional blend. “But once we get into something, we really get into it. We’re not early adopters, but dedicated followers of fashion. You just have to give us time.”
 
In fact, Hartmann spotted the owner of one of Vienna’s most famous coffee houses drinking one of his cappuccinos recently. Perhaps the revolution will come sooner than expected.