Austria part 1: passionate wine makers

Neusiedlersee from the vineyards.

A little while ago I was lucky enough to have a fabulous trip around most of Austria’s wine regions. I was pretty excited about it as I had long wanted to get a real look at this resurgent wine producing country.

Personally I have always been drawn to the Austrian /  Central European culture and have always enjoyed the food and the beer and liked the look of this part of the world. So, I was looking forward to getting better acquainted with it as well as seeing the wine regions and meeting many of the important winemakers.

For reasons of economy I flew in through Bratislava, which is very close to Vienna and was for hundreds of years the Imperial Austrian city of Pressburg or Preßburg. I didn’t have time for a meal, unusually for me I didn’t have the inclination either as I knew my plans for later that evening in Vienna, so I grabbed a sandwich and a beer at the airport.

I was already somewhere interesting when something as a simple ham and cheese sandwich bore no relation to its counterparts at home. It came on black bread with smoky Black Forest ham, rich cream cheese, loads of pickles and was delicious. The beer too was far better than such a simple thing as a lager would normally be in my life, it had a rich hoppy character and a depth of flavour that would astonish most members of CAMRA.

Arriving in Vienna for the first time in 27 years I strolled around this grand city trying out some of the wonderful coffee houses and cafés for which the place is justly famous. It seemed as though almost every building housed a cake shop – do they really eat that much cake I wondered? Watching the Viennese at play over the course of the evening it seemed that they really did – and later I joined them myself.

Dinner that night was a sort of pilgrimage for me. All my life I have been excited by schnitzels – I know it sounds strange, it even looks odd to me now I have actually typed the words, which is akin to saying them out loud. Hell, it’s cheaper than therapy! I am always drawn to schnitzel on a menu though, even if there is finer fare to be had. I have this theory that schnitzel is the best dish in the world – no not a theory, a belief! So I went to the place where the schnitzel began.

The Wiener Schnitzel is a classic dish, but it seems that no one can actually find much of a history for it. I remember reading that General Joseph Radetzky von Radetz – he of the march / waltz fame – was supposed to have brought it back to Austria after campaigning in Lombardy and Milan. A Milanese Cutlet / Cotoletta alla Milanese is superficially similar and the Austrians were supposed to have refined it by bashing the meat out to tenderise it and make it very thin. Sadly it seems that this is a myth though and no one knows exactly where it came from or when.

Wiener Schnitzel at Figlmüller alongside a €2 to compare the sizes.

In Vienna there is a restaurant called Figlmüller that not only claims to have invented the schnitzel, but to have done so as recently as 1905. I find that extraordinary as 1905 is only just beyond living memory, my grandfather was 20 and my own parents births were only 22 years away. How can something so famous and so universal be that recent? Anyway I went and had a most excellent Wiener Schnitzel washed down with a rather splendid beer and copious amounts of Grüner Veltliner from the restaurants’ own vineyards.

For desert I visited the Café Sacher inthe world famous Hotel Sacher, which makes probably the most famous chocolate cake in the world. I felt that at least once in my life I should try the original in the actual place that gave the world the sachertorte. The café is rather lovely with genuine old world charm, open till midnight and serves a stunning red Zweigelt Beerenauslese, from Weingut Kracher in Burgenland, which is absolutely perfect with a slice of sachertorte - a better match than coffee actually.

Having immersed myself in the most famous, possibly clichéd, but certainly delicious, aspects of Austria’s gastronomic culture, the next morning I felt ready to explore her wines.

Austria’s wine regions – click for a larger view.

Touring the Vineyards
The start of my trip was billed as a vineyard rally through Leithaberg and Neusiedlersee. Of course with my new found instant knowledge I knew that Leithaberg was a Districtus Austriae Controllatus / D.A.C wine region near Eisenstadt that covered the lower reaches of the Leithaberg mountain and faced south east towards the beautiful lake called Neusiedlersee.

Despite sounding mysterious, the vineyard rally turned out to be simplicity itself, no hard hat or special training was required. We were taken to two different spots in the surrounding vineyards to meet some winemakers and taste their wines.

Our first stop was right in the middle of the vines with barely a building insight – other than church towers in the far, far distance. The weather was warm with clear blue skies and the spot stunningly beautiful with that feeling of total peace that I associate more with vineyards than anywhere else. Spying a falcon in flight just added to the feeling of being somewhere special.

Leo Sommer

Weingut Sommer
There we were met by the impossibly youthful looking Leo Sommer who was representing Weingut Sommer, the winery his family have run since 1698. Leo had set up a tasting for us right where the slope stopped at the foot of a rocky ridge. Looking one way I saw the vineyards sloping gently down towards the lake that shimmered enticingly in the distance. In the other direction the land became much steeper with fewer vineyards.

Looking towards the lake.

The Sommers farm 30 hectares here and they aim to capture the essence of the place in their wines. The summer here is hot and dry, with ripening helped by the warm winds blowing in from Hungary’s Pannonian plain. The nearby lake though manages to temper and balance that heat in the height of summer, while helping to keep the autumn cold at bay during the later part of the ripening season. This is the important Altweibersommer or Indian Summer that allows them to harvest very late in this area.

Looking away from the lake you can see how the slope changes. We had our tasting by the van.

A close up of the same scene.

White Leithaberg D.A.C. wines can be made from Pinot Blanc  / Weißburgunder, Chardonnay, Neuburger, Grüner Veltliner or a blend of any of these and we tasted two of the Sommer’s Grüner Veltliners. One had some oak with lees stirring, while the other was all stainless steel, yet they both summed this place up to my mind. To different degrees they both had a richly textured ripeness leading to a taut, stony mineral finish and when looking around this glorious sun drenched landscape with its sandy loam and slate soils, it struck me – this was precisely what these slopes should produce.

In many ways standing here felt as though I was in a little protected pocket by other less forgiving climates – much like Alsace or Central Otago. The more I thought about that when we visited all the different regions the more I realised that is exactly what the Austrian wine regions are – mountains and more extreme weather dominate the rest of the country – we often glimpsed snow-capped ridges , so these places in the far east of Austria are an oasis of temperate growing conditions.

Our next port of call reinforced this view. This time we were nearer the lake, right at the bottom of the gentle slope before the flat land that surrounds the Neusiedlersee and our hosts were Martin Palser and Birgit Braunstein, a married couple who just happen to both be winemakers and each runs their own winery.

Birgit Braunstein & Martin Palser

Martin Palser 
Down here it seems there is much more limestone and Martin grows Chardonnay on this soil, which makes his take on the Leithaberg D.A.C. very different from Leo Sommer’s wines. His 2011 Chardonnay Reserve impressed me very much with its lovely balance, very Burgundian character and pronounced minerality – I know, I know – and Martin told us that this minerality was the character of the place and was more important than grape variety in his opinion.

Looking towards the lake.

Birgit Braunstein
Then Martin handed over to his wife who presented two red wines made from the region’s signature black grape – Blaufränkisch. Red Leithaberg D.A.C. wines must contain at least 85% of this with up to 15% of St. Laurent, Zweigelt or Pinot Noir. I have enjoyed Blaufränkisch before – even as Lemberger in New York’s Finger Lakes, but none have impressed me quite as much as these two made by Brigit Braunstein. Her 2009 Blaufränkisch Reserve Leithaberg D.A.C. was beautifully fruity and balanced with gorgeously ripe fruit together with elegant spice, the delicious cherry-like acidity that I associate with the grape – and a streak of pure minerality. Somehow the wine managed to keep quiet about the 18 months it had spent in new oak and was superbly integrated.

Standing on their terrace looking across the vineyards to the lake I was struck by the place, conditions and landscape and how they seemed to echo the wines that I had just tasted. The breezes blew the otherwise searing heat away – “air conditioning for the vines” as Martin put it – and these are ripe, cool climate wines. They are keen on biodiversity here and the fields were a colourful riot of cherry trees, wildflowers, grasses and herbs as covercrop between and around the vines, while the sandy loam soil, slate and limestone that it all grows in is key here. The defining characteristic of Leithaberg D.A.C. seems to be the minerality and I felt that it was all around me as well as being in the glass.

All in all it was an excellent beginning to the day, I felt peaceful, invigorated, more experienced and better informed and it wasn’t yet 11 o’clock.

Weingut Birgit Eichinger
Funny things wine trips. You live in close proximity to people you barely see the rest of your life, you lose all track of time and get dragged from one place to the next at breakneck speed with barely a backward glance – until you start writing anyway. You get given far more meals in a day than is strictly required – and sadly get to like them. What does stand out though, what makes all the suffering (really?) worthwhile is when we visit somewhere that touches the heart and a good few of the visits on this Austrian trip did just that, but one of the most memorable was to Weingut Birgit Eichinger.

Brigit Eichinger

There aren’t many women winemakers in Austria, so Brigit Eichinger is pretty unnusual – strangely the only other one we met was also called Birgit, Birgit Braunstein – what’s more Birgit Eichinger and her builder husband Christian have only been running their estate since 1992 when they started with 3.5 hectares. The winery was built in 1994 and they have been adding vineyards when they can and today they farm some 15 hectares in Strass.

Strass is in Kamptal which in turn is part of Niederösterreich, which is in many ways the heartland of Austrian wine as it includes the famous regions of Wachau, Kremstal and Wagram amongst many others and so certainly defines my view of Austrian wine – the whites anyway.

Site matters here as there is no one single terroir. Many of the vineyards have loess over gravel and loam, but others have sandstone, slate and schist, so as in Alsace matching the grape variety to the site makes real differences to the wine. There is even volcanic rock on the Heiligenstein slope from where Birgit produces a stunning, spicy, pure and intensely mineral Riesling.

To qualify as Kamptal D.A.C. a wine must be made from Grüner Veltliner or Riesling, so Birgit’s deliciously floral and exotic Roter Veltliner – also known as the Roter Muskateller and no relation to Grüner at all – and her Chardonnay are simply labelled as coming from the wider area of Niederösterreich.

The view from Weingut Birgit Eichinger

The landscape here is spectacularly beautiful – actually everywhere we went was – with the terraced vineyards cascading down the slopes towards the small town of Strass where Birgit’s winery sits at the foot of the Gaisberg slope.

All the wines were superb and I know that many of us would have purchased a few bottles if we had had the space in our luggage. The Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners in particular showed their class with a concentration and yet lightness of touch that gave them a feeling of tension and sophistication that certainly brought a smile to my face.

Birgit’s beautiful wines are available in the UK from John Armit Wines and in the US through Weygandt-Metzler Importing for other teritories check here.

The whole trip was a delight – apart from being locked out of my hotel room and two of my colleagues missing their flights – and my enthusiasm for the country and its wines has been totally rekindled. I will write about some of the other places I visited and wines I tasted in Austria soon.

If Austrian wines have passed you by then you really do owe it to yourself to give them a go. There is a great deal of pleasure to be had by exploring the wines of Austria.

Louis Jadot at The Criterion

The delights to come – © Quentin Sadler 2012

At their best the wines of Burgundy are without peer, but the region produces such a relatively small amount of wine with high world demand that they can be very expensive indeed and even then can frequently disappoint. When they are good though they really let you know it.

It is interesting that the wines of Burgundy do get to you over time. I well remember that twenty odd years ago their beguiling beauty passed me by. Not any more.

As good as many others are, no where on earth uses Chardonnay to make such exquisitely poised and balanced white wines with tension between the richness and freshness. The red wines of Burgundy though are more tricky to get your head around. I think this is because they defy the wine norms of our time. We are used to big wines, full-bodied wines are widely favoured over other styles, yet Pinot Noir grown in the coolish climate of Burgundy simply does not produce truly full-bodied wines. They are generally lighter and more savoury than most other famous types of red wines and I think they really do need food to show at their best.

I have been fortunate to visit Burgundy a good few times over the years and am slowly acquiring a good working knowledge of the place and its wines. In addition I have been involved with Louis Jadot, one of the great producers of Burgundy on and off for some 25 years. In a region which is usually a patchwork of very small vineyards and producers it is very hard to get an overview of the place from this array of tiny farmer-winemakers. So a producer like Louis Jadot who is the largest landowner in the Côte d’Or really serves a useful purpose in providing a wide range of Burgundy wines.

There are other famous districts of Burgundy, Chablis, Mercurey and Pouilly-Fuissé amongst them, but it is really the Côte d’Or that sets the tone and provides much of the region’s fame. It is home to some of the most famous and sought after wines in the world including Meursault, Pommard, Gevrey-Chambertin and Nuits-St-Georges.

At first glance the Côte d’Or would appear to be so small that the wines it makes must surely all be pretty similar – after all it is sometimes less than half a kilometre wide. However, this is the place that really demonstrates the French concept of ‘terroir‘. The soils and conditions really matter here and make for the differences between the wines, although nuances might be a better word than differences as they are slight. The limestone ridge or escarpment that is the Côte d’Or consists of layers of different limestones, some more porous than others, as well as marls made up of clay, sand and gravel.

That makes sit sound as though it is all uniform, but it really isn’t. The limestones have weathered and decomposed at different speeds and are pierced by small rivers and dry valleys making for great variation as to which limestones dominate different parts. The topsoil also varies, as some are flinty and some a more chalky scree and the collapsing of the limestone ridge leaves different types and depths of topsoil.

Another variable is aspect, there are fissures, gaps, ravines and valleys in the limestone which change the direction a little, so some vineyards face more directly south than others – these will generally produce bigger wines as the grapes get more sun and so have more sugar which produces more alcohol and extract in the finished wine.

The other day I was asked to put on a fine red Burgundy tasting in The Criterion Restaurant in London’s Piccadilly. I had never been there before and what a place it is. Founded in 1874 hard by the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus the restaurant is a sumptuous confection of such exuberance that to my uneducated eye seems a heady combination fin de Siècle and art nouveau styles. The shiny gold mosaic tiles made me feel I was inside a Klimt painting and the general ambience made it seem possible that Oscar and Bosie would walk through the door at any moment.

The glorious interior of The Criterion during my tasting – © Quentin Sadler 2012

Looking Back at Angers

Last week I was on a rather lovely trip to the Loire Vally in France. Unusually though I didn’t just get to see vineyards and wineries, but a little bit of the surrounding area too – which could be seen as self indulgence, but I think that seeing the place, people and culture around a wine can often help with understanding what makes a wine region tick. Strolling around the French city of Angers in the middle of a working day felt like a lovely adventure – even a little naughty. It was as if it was stolen time that I should have spent doing something more productive – but what the heck.

The city feels quite small, which can be very attractive as you can see it all in a short time without having to cherry pick as you would in somewhere the size of London or Paris. The River Maine flows through the middle of the city and you get lovely glimpses of it from the ramparts of the astonishing Château d’Angers. Once home to Catherine de Medici, this is not your typical Loire Valley Château, but a huge mediaeval fortress whose harsh defensive exterior does not prepare you at all for the haven of peace inside. It is a delightful place for a stroll complete with rampart walk, gardens, orchards and even a small vineyard. Most famously though it houses the Apocalypse Tapestry - well worth a look as it really is one of the jewels of early French culture – strangely enough this castle was also the place where, as a young man the future Duke of Wellington received his military training.

Angers Castle

A tapas crawl in Logroño, Rioja

I have always had a soft spot for Logroño. Most of it isn’t pretty, but it seems to have everything I require from a Spanish city – wide streets lined with cafés and shops, fountains and comfortable hotels, while at its centre is the wonderful old town or Casco Viejo. This delightful pedestrianised zone is a higgledy-piggledy area of narrow alleys lined with bars and over the last 20 years or so it has become a mecca for tapas lovers. In many ways, as the landscape is so unforgiving and the pueblos – wine towns – small and quiet this is the heart of Rioja.

Funny stuff tapas. It is one of Spains great gifts to the world and as much a cultural icon of the country as Paella, bull-fighting and Miró, but in truth I think the story of tapas is more like that of Pizza in Italy. Yes, Pizza is Italian, but it was popularised and made special elsewhere and then returned triumphant to the land if its birth. I remember 1960s Spain. There was precious little tapas then, unless you went to the really big cities or Andalucia. That is where tapas is supposed to have originated as a cover or lid (tapa) to keep flies out of your sherry glass. Originally it was simply a piece of jamón, chorizo or bread, but as the competition hotted up they became more complex and interesting – although I for one always find jamón interesting. Tapas existed in the cities and Andalucia and possibly the Basque country, but in the past it was a simple nibble with a drink. It took the tourist boom to make it famous and to turn it into something creative and gastronomic with groups of people sharing lots of little dishes instead of dinner.

Viva Paella – National Paella Day

The real thing at Vintara in the Plaza de la Reina in Valencia

Paella is one of the great dishes of the world. It captures Spain on a plate and is bright, evocative and exotic. It speaks of a place and tradition and although it is an absolute classic anyone can make it and even use a bit of creativity and substitute some of the ingredients.

It is a very old dish with roots going back at least as far as Moorish times and although it is now available all over Spain it actually originates in the rice fields of southern Valencia - see map of the Valencia region here.  The field workers – like barbecue Paella is even now usually cooked by men – would make a casserole of rice mixed with whatever was available – water-rat, rabbit and snails were the original classics. Local fishermen also developed seafood versions and once the popularity of this wonderful dish spread outside Valencia then people started mixing the two forms together and Paella Mixta – perhaps the most famous version – was born. The dish became more and more famous until by 1840 the word Paella had become the name of the recipe rather than the pan that was used to cook it in.

Historically paella is the Valenciano / Catalan word for any cooking pan and derives from a Latin root and the Old French word paelle – the similarities between Catalan and French are often striking. Today the pan is generally known as a paellera.

My Favourite Wines, Top Discoveries and Experiences of 2011

I feel like a respite from all the self indulgence that the Christmas holidays force upon me and feel my thoughts turning back to wine. As the New Year is coming up fast I thought that I would attempt to tell you about my wine highlights for the year.

Most of my top wines have been written up here on my Wine Page, but some have slipped through the net and are new today. Please always remember that this is an entirely personal list, but I hope you enjoy it and that it gives some food for thought.

Sparkling Wines

I was really spoiled for fizz this year, 2 Champagne tastings stand out in particular:

Champagne:

Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut Non Vintage based on the 1953 vintage
This whole tasting was extraordinary and provided a wonderful insight into a type of Champagne that it is all too easy to take for granted – read about it here.

1995 Perrier Jouët Belle Époque
In February I was lucky enough to taste four different vintages of Belle Epoque out of jeroboams, the 1995 was the standout wine for me, but they were all superb – read about it here.

Wine and Spicy Food

I spent last week-end leading tutored tastings at the West Dean Chilli Fiesta. This is a terrific event that happens every August in the middle of the South Downs just north of Chichester and it celebrates all things spicy – mainly the chilli itself, but also everything connected with it. There are stalls with chilli sauces, chilli dips, chilli plants, paintings of chillis, models of chillis, shirts emblazoned with chillis, pots, pans and chilli ice-cream. There is a plethora of spicy foods to enjoy; Mexican, Jamaican, Indian, Singaporean, Indonesian, Thai and American all washed down by the products in the delightfully English beer tent and made even more fun by the variety of live Latin American music, including salsa and Mariachi.

chill-i out room at West Dean Chilli Fiesta

As far as wine is concerned though it was just me and my colleagues. My job was to lead 6 tutored tastings a day about the wines of Viña Errazuriz who are one of Chile’s top producers – you see what we did there with Chilli/Chile? I covered quite a few topics, different regions of Chile, winemaking styles, I even compared different Syrahs from around the world with one from Viña Errazuriz.

Kölsch – the true eau de Cologne and a great beer

Bustling Köln from the Früh brewpub

Summer is, intermittently, here and so my thoughts are increasingly turning to beer. Nothing is quite as refreshing or cleansing on a hot day as a cool beer, so I tend to think about it a great deal at this time of year.

In truth I am a bit of a beer wuss. Because I like beer to refresh I am normally drawn to lighter, criper brews, especially Pilsner type lagers. However such beers can be quite wonderful and I object to the lazy, but widely held belief that all lagers taste the same. Mass market lagers brewed in the UK do, but that is not the same thing at all. Try a König, a Paulaner and a Warsteiner side by side and compare them with an Urquell or an Alhambra Reserva 1925. In fact pop over to the Netherlands and taste all the different types of Grolsch, including seasonal versions – they are all still lagers though. In fact this does raise the question as to why all the big name lagers do become completely bland once they are brewed in the UK, when they have become famous enough to be brewed over here precisely because of their flavour and character!

A Gluttons Guide to Spanish Culture

Los Caracoles in Barcelona, you enter the restaurant through the back of the bar...

...and go through the kitchen to your table

I love Spain and am passionate about Spain’s food, wine and history, so I wrote a very personal piece about Spanish food and some very traditional restaurants and I think you might enjoy it, its published on Catavino.com and you can read it here

St Estèphe – a love renewed

I well remember the first time I tried a half decent claret, one that did not have the word on the label that is. How sophisticated I felt and what a revelation it seemed. I shied away from the costly 1982 Sarget de Gruaud-Larose – £4.99 a bottle, how wish I had bought 20 cases or so – and kept to the more modest Château Meyney 1977 Cru Bourgeois St Estèphe at £3.99.

That experience, which was a good one, was pivotal in fixing my view of red Bordeaux wines. From that moment one I knew I liked them, respected them and desired them, sadly I could seldom ever afford them and it has remained that way ever since. Bear in mind too that was in the days when a bad vintage, like 1977, bore no relation to a good one at all – not like now.