Vienna: Schlumberger Sparkling Wine Cellar Tour & Tasting

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Free cancellationExcellent quality

1/6

Duration50m–1h 30m

GroupUp to 45

LanguagesEN · DE

PickupAt your hotel

Inside Vienna's 180-Year-Old Sparkling Wine Cellar

You walk through 180 years of sparkling wine history in a Vienna cellar, try hand-riddling bottles yourself, and learn how the fizz gets trapped inside. The audioguide works in eight languages, and if you book a guided tour on Wednesday or Saturday afternoon, a live guide leads the way. You finish with a tasting at the bar before heading back out.

50m–1h 30m

Step-by-step itinerary

Visit Schlumberger Sparkling Wine Cellar

Arrive at Schlumberger cellar bar
Receive welcome from staff
Tour the sparkling wine cellar
Learn history of Schlumberger since 1842
Discover sparkling wine and champagne making
Try hand-riddling bottles on racks
Unravel disgorging and dosage secrets

The Experience

You descend into the Schlumberger cellars and the temperature drops. The stone walls around you date back to 1842, and the air smells like yeast and cork. An audioguide in your language walks you through how sparkling wine gets its fizz — the méthode champenoise process that still happens in these tunnels, bottles stacked on wooden racks at angles that look almost precarious until your guide explains why they're tilted that way. The cellar tour in Vienna takes about 50 minutes, and you move through rooms where the bottles sit for months, waiting.

The part that stays with you is the hand-riddling. You stand at one of those sloped wooden racks and actually turn a bottle the way cellar workers have done it for generations — a quarter turn, a small lift, a rotation. It's repetitive and oddly meditative, and suddenly you understand why this job existed before machines. Your guide (if you've booked a Wednesday or Saturday at 2pm in English, or 4pm in German) explains what happens next: disgorging, where the frozen sediment gets removed, and dosage, the final adjustment that determines how dry or sweet the wine tastes. The audioguide covers all of this too, available in eight languages including Russian, Chinese and Japanese.

At the bar upstairs, you taste. The sparkling wine comes cold, and if you've selected the tasting package, you're trying more than one. The staff welcome you back to ground level, and you leave with the kind of specific knowledge that makes you sound like you actually know something about wine at dinner parties. Last admissions are one hour before closing, so plan accordingly if you're fitting this around other Vienna plans.

What’s included

Your visit includes an audioguide in your chosen language, access to the Schlumberger cellar and its 180-year history, the hand-riddling experience on the wooden racks, and an explanation of disgorging and dosage.
A glass of sparkling wine is included if selected, and tasting packages with multiple wines are available.
If you book a guided tour on Wednesday or Saturday afternoon, a live guide leads the experience instead of the audioguide.

Good to know

Easy physical levelStroller friendlyPets welcomePublic transport nearby

Operated by Schlumberger Wein- und Sektkellerei GmbH

Is this one for you?Book this if you want to understand how sparkling wine actually gets made and have time for a hands-on experience in a working cellar — the audioguide means you don't need to wait for a group departure, and the Wednesday and Saturday guided tours give you a live expert if you prefer that.