The terraced vineyards above Weißenkirchen and Spitz

The Wachau's vineyards are not fields but staircases. Generations of growers built dry-stone walls across the steep granite slope and filled the steps behind them with soil, and the result is a terraced landscape that runs for kilometres above the river — some terraces two rows wide, some a single vine, with the walls holding the heat and the Danube reflecting light back up at them.

The best of it stands above Weißenkirchen, where the famous parcels of Achleiten and Klaus climb behind the village, and above Spitz, where the Tausendeimerberg rises directly out of the houses; the hill is named for the thousand buckets of wine it was said to give in a good year. Paths and tractor tracks run through both, and the World Heritage trail links them, but the vines themselves are private working ground — stay on the tracks and out of the rows.

The terraces face south to the river, so the last two hours of light are the whole point: the low sun runs along the walls, separates every row and turns the stone gold, with the valley and the water behind. Mornings are flatter but clean and completely empty.

The year here is unusually legible. The first half of April puts apricot blossom through the orchards on the lower slopes, June is deep green and the rows are dense, and the vintage in the first half of October turns the leaves gold and fills the wine taverns; pickers work the terraces through it and are part of the picture. From November to March the terraces are bare stone and wire — graphic, spare, and photographed by almost nobody.