About Falstaff

Falstaff

Falstaff is an Austrian wine, food and travel magazine published in Vienna by Falstaff Verlags-GmbH. Founded in 1980 as a specialist wine journal, it has grown into the largest wine, food and travel magazine in German-speaking Europe, with separate Austrian, German and Swiss editions, authoritative annual wine guides, and a digital audience described by the publisher as running into the millions. The magazine appears about ten times a year in its Austrian edition and is written in German. Its name is taken from Sir John Falstaff, the Shakespearean knight celebrated for his love of eating and drinking, a choice that signalled from the outset that pleasure, appetite and conviviality would stand at the centre of the publication's identity.

From its base in Vienna, in the federal state of Vienna, Falstaff serves a readership that extends well beyond Austria's borders. The cross-national circulation certificate issued jointly by the audit organisations of Germany, Austria and Switzerland recorded a combined circulation of 147,564 copies, divided between Germany, Austria and Switzerland, making Falstaff the first publication to receive that joint certification. Publisher figures commonly cite a total circulation of around 150,000 across its print and e-magazine editions including line extensions. That scale, sustained over more than four decades, places Falstaff in a distinctive position among Austrian magazines: a title that began as a small, expert-led wine journal and became a multi-country media platform.

Founding in 1980 as a Wine Journal

Falstaff was founded in 1980 by the business journalists Hans Dibold and Helmut Romé, with financial support from the entrepreneur Leo Wallner. Romé brought unusual authority to the venture. In 1979, the year before the magazine appeared, he had published Die großen Weine Österreichs, a work widely regarded as a milestone in Austrian wine publishing. Romé is remembered as a pioneer of Austrian wine journalism, and Falstaff became the vehicle through which that pioneering work reached a regular readership. Dibold and Romé served as the founding publishers and shaped the magazine's direction for almost three decades.

The early Falstaff was deliberately focused. It was a wine journal at a time when Austrian wine was still rebuilding its reputation and when systematic, scored wine criticism in German was far less established than it later became. From its founding year, the magazine organised the Falstaff Rotweinpreis, a red wine prize intended in its first years specifically to promote the quality of Austrian red wine. The editorial team assessed wines using the international 100-point system, and the resulting Falstaff points quickly became a benchmark within the Austrian wine world, quoted by producers, merchants and restaurants. That early combination of criticism, competition and advocacy for domestic quality defined the magazine's first era.

The Rosam Era and Relaunch

A decisive change of ownership came in 2009. In that year Wolfgang M. Rosam increased his stake in Falstaff Verlag from 25 percent to 74 percent, while the associated Falstaff guide business was already wholly his. The founders, Romé and Dibold, departed at that point, ending a 29-year founding era that had run from 1980 to 2009. By 2010 the magazine was reported as 90 percent owned by Wolfgang M. Rosam, with the remaining 10 percent held by his wife Angelika Rosam. Wolfgang and Angelika Rosam are listed as the publishers of Falstaff Verlag, whose registered form is a Ges.m.b.H. headquartered in Vienna.

The change of ownership was followed in 2010 by a full relaunch. The magazine received a new layout, and at the same time the web portal falstaff.at was introduced, marking the point at which Falstaff began its transformation from a print wine journal into a cross-media brand. Under Rosam, who had a background in public relations and communications, the editorial scope broadened decisively beyond wine alone. Food, restaurants, travel, hotels and lifestyle were built out into equal pillars alongside wine, producing the formula later described for the international edition as the trinity of wine, food and travel. Peter Moser has served as a long-standing editor-in-chief for wine, while the broader magazine developed separate editorial leadership for its culinary and travel coverage.

Wine Coverage and the Falstaff Points

Wine remains the historical core of Falstaff and the source of much of its authority. The magazine's tastings, conducted by specialist editors and tasting teams, produce scores on the 100-point scale that are used throughout the trade in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Annual wine guides for each of the three countries present those assessments in collected form, and the Austrian and German guides also appear in English. For Italy, South Tyrolean expert Othmar Kiem, associated with Falstaff since 1999, has long overseen coverage, tasting hundreds of Italian wines each year and pairing the coverage with portraits of dishes and wine regions.

The tasting programme extends beyond the annual guides. Themed tastings, referred to in the international edition's commercial model as trophies, are organised by grape variety, country or style and are aligned with the seasonal and editorial themes of individual issues. The results feed both the print magazine and the digital platforms, where searchable tasting notes form a substantial database. For Austrian producers in particular, a strong Falstaff assessment carries weight in export markets, because the brand's German and Swiss editions carry Austrian wine coverage directly to the two most important neighbouring markets for Austrian wine.

Food, Restaurants and Travel

The second pillar of Falstaff is gastronomy. The magazine covers restaurants, chefs and culinary trends across the German-speaking countries, publishes restaurant guidance alongside its wine guides, and treats cooking as a subject for both professional and ambitious home audiences. Restaurant reviews, chef portraits, recipe features and reports on regional produce give the food coverage a breadth that distinguishes Falstaff from a purely wine-focused title. Its coverage of Austrian regional cuisines, from Alpine farmhouse cooking to Viennese fine dining, connects the magazine to the country's strong culinary tourism sector.

Travel forms the third pillar. Falstaff reports on wine regions, gourmet destinations, hotels and journeys in Austria and internationally, presenting travel as an extension of the table: where to eat, what to drink and where to stay. Hotel and travel features are closely integrated with the wine and restaurant content, so that a report on a wine region typically also guides readers to its restaurants and accommodation. Line extensions have extended the formula further, including Falstaff LIVING, launched with a residences focus in 2020, which applies the brand to property, design and living, with its own circulation across the three German-speaking countries.

Editions in Germany and Switzerland

Although Falstaff is an Austrian creation, its present structure is trinational. Separate editions are published for Austria, Germany and Switzerland, each with its own homepage, falstaff.at, falstaff.de and falstaff.ch respectively, together with newsletters, social media channels and guide apps. The joint circulation audit across the three audit bodies, IVW in Germany, ÖAK in Austria and WEMF in Switzerland, was itself presented as a first in European press auditing, reflecting the unusual degree to which Falstaff operates as a single brand across three national magazine markets.

Each country edition maintains a close relationship with its local wine industry. Publisher and trade descriptions emphasise that the editions succeed through local rootedness and expertise, with country-specific editorial teams assessing domestic wines and restaurants for domestic readers, while the shared brand provides international visibility. Austrian content therefore reaches German and Swiss readers through their own editions, and German and Swiss wine and food coverage is in turn available to the Austrian audience, a circulation of expertise that a single-country title could not achieve.

Falstaff International and English-Language Publishing

In 2021 Falstaff took its first step into English-language publishing with Falstaff International. The venture is based in Vienna but was edited in London and published globally. Its inaugural digital issue appeared in July 2021 and its first print edition followed in October 2021, with quarterly publication planned and a global print circulation ambition of 100,000 copies stated at launch. Anne Krebiehl, a Master of Wine, was appointed editor-in-chief of the international edition, and the launch deliberately sought new and previously less-established voices in wine, food and travel writing.

The international edition was presented as an accessible yet luxurious magazine founded on the same trinity of wine, food and travel. Interviews around the launch stressed that the German-language Falstaff had already become the most successful wine, food and travel magazine in German-speaking Europe under Rosam, and that translation into English was intended to remove the language limit on that success. The commercial model described for the international title combined print and digital advertising with the tasting trophy programme and, in time, community building and events. Falstaff International thus represents the extension of a Viennese publishing house, founded as a two-person wine journal in 1980, into global English-language gourmet media.

Digital Platforms and Community

Alongside print, Falstaff operates substantial digital platforms in each of its markets. The homepages for Austria, Germany and Switzerland publish news, tasting notes, restaurant information and travel content on a continuous cycle, supported by newsletters, social media presence and guide applications. The publisher states that the total audience and community across these channels runs into the millions, considerably larger than the print circulation alone. Digital tasting databases allow readers to search wines by score, producer and region, turning the magazine's critical work into a permanent reference resource.

The digital operation also supports events and community formats. The Gourmet Club membership, tastings and reader events connect the print brand to a paying community, and distribution arrangements place the magazine in airport lounges, top hotels and gastronomy venues as well as through subscribers. This combination of subscription, newsstand, hospitality distribution and digital reach is characteristic of Falstaff's premium positioning: the magazine is sold not only as a periodical but as an entry point into a wider world of wine and food services.

Position in Austrian Magazine Publishing

Within Austria, Falstaff occupies a singular niche. Austria has many general food magazines and several strong news and business titles, but Falstaff is the country's dedicated wine and gourmet authority, and the only Austrian magazine to have built comparable editions in Germany and Switzerland. Its longevity, from 1980 to the present, spans the modern history of Austrian wine itself, from the rebuilding years after the 1970s through the quality revolution in Austrian red and white wine to the current export-oriented industry. The magazine both reported on and, through its prize and points system, actively participated in that development.

The title also illustrates a broader pattern in Austrian publishing: specialist magazines anchored in Vienna can achieve an outsized presence in the wider German-language market of around 100 million speakers. Falstaff's trinational audit figures, its English-language offshoot and its guide publishing programme make it one of the clearest Austrian examples of that pattern. For readers, the Austrian edition remains first a practical companion to eating and drinking well in Austria, informed by more than four decades of continuous tasting and restaurant coverage.

Publishing Details and Readership

Falstaff is published in Vienna by Falstaff Verlags-GmbH, in German, and appears about ten times a year. Its official Austrian website is falstaff.at, part of the falstaff.com group presence. The readership is affluent and interest-led: wine collectors, gastronomy professionals, restaurateurs, hoteliers and private readers for whom food and travel are central leisure interests. Advertising and media materials position the title accordingly in the premium segment, with distribution through subscriptions, the Gourmet Club, newsstands, hotels and airport lounges.

Publicly available information about Falstaff is comparatively rich for an Austrian specialist magazine, because of its audited trinational circulation, its documented founding and ownership history, and the extensive trade coverage of its international launch. Details of individual issue contents change with each edition and are best consulted on the publisher's own platforms. What remains constant, and what this profile can state with confidence, is the outline established above: founded in Vienna in 1980 by Hans Dibold and Helmut Romé, relaunched and greatly expanded after Wolfgang M. Rosam took control in 2009 and 2010, and now published as the largest wine, food and travel magazine in German-speaking Europe, with Austria as its home market.