Jamek 2011 Grüner Veltliner

Oh, autumn! The most wonderful thing about autumn is the harvest - as it is getting closer to Thanksgiving, my American upbringing is kicking in and I am getting excited about stuffing and pumpkin pie! Here in Austria, the focus is not exactly on turkey and stuffing yourself until you explode, but quite a few seasonal delicacies have sprung up at the Naschmarkt, including mushrooms (it's mushroom season and a favorite Austrian pasttime is picking your own...) and Kürbis (translated as both "squash" and "pumpkin"). I've been experimenting with both ingredients, and since I decided to make a chantrelle (Eierschawmmerl) goulash for dinner, I thought I would flavor it with another favored Austrian autumn classic, a new wine! 


This delicious white wine, produced in the Wachau, is a soft, fruity, light wine - just what you'd expect from a new wine! Opening the bottle reminded me of spring, and though I don't often compare wines to perfumes, it really reminded me of Yoko Ono's signature scent, Ma Griffe (certainly it tastes better than Ma Griffe would, however). Sort of a lemony-sage-jasmine flavor (scent?). I tasted a distinct grapefruit flavor in the palate. The finish is a bit earthier than expected, and the color is a beautiful pale yellow.


I bought this wine for roughly €8 at Wein & Co. It's a bit more than what I normally pay at Spar or Billa, but definitely worth the splurge. 

Duca del Frassino Soave Classico

I picked this bottle up at Merkur, near my apartment. It was on sale for around 6 euros, and the bottle said it won a bronze medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards in 2010. So I was surprised to find that in the US, this wine is marketed (and sold) in a box.

Perhaps I am the consummate snob. Perhaps I am woefully out of date. But the boxed wine I remember is Franzia in a four liter cardboard monster, being sipped out of plastic cups (or gulped straight from the carton) by very drunk and insouciant college students gathered in a dorm room, around a campfire or "hidden" in a thermos at a less-than-stellar poetry slam. Not the stuff of dinner parties or persnickety sommeliers.

The wine itself is nice, with a very crisp fruit taste, like Bosco pears or Macintosh apples. Or maybe a bit of both. I've had better Italian whites, I feel...but maybe I'm being overly picky. I prefer Italian reds anyway, but giving this a chance, I can say it is a definite improvement over Franzia, despite how it's marketed outside Europe.

Hiedler Kamptal Grüner Veltliner 2010

This wine was the Spar October "Wein des Monats" and is from Langlois, which is incidentally a place I visited around this time last year - it's a small town in the Weinviertel, near the Czech border. Touted as the "region's finest" on the chalkboard outside the wine section, I can even feel reassured that I was buying local when I bought this wine.

The Hiedler tasted excellent with butternut squash au gratin and bleu cheese. The wine is just sweet enough to be perfect with bleu cheese and just dry enough to be able to call itself a Grüner Veltliner. I might just be making this up, but i'm pretty sure I tasted notes of lemongrass and mint. Maybe even strawberry?! It was a very herbal-y wine, at least.

I would definitely buy this wine again. It can even be found online - props to being in a viniferous country!

Sturm!

Yes, they have officially started selling Sturm for the season! Sturm, for those unfamiliar with the wine-making process, is wine in its very first fermentation of the year. It's a lot like a mix between a grape cider and a grape beer, with the possibility of as much alcohol content as the wine it will become, but tastes just like juice, so you don't feel like you're drinking wine. Thus the name, "storm," which refers most undoubtedly to the hangover you get the next day...like a hurricane in your head. However, since it is only produced for a few short weeks, typically September through October each year, it is a rarity and an indulgence.

Sturm is almost always a white wine, perhaps because of the climate of Austria and the preference for white wines in this region, it is the most abundant. However, I have also seen red sturm, though I personally prefer white. Red sturm can be awfully heavy, whereas white sturm is lighter and, by contrast, more refreshing. Also, because of the yeast content, sturm has a lot of B vitamins!

Known as must in English, the drink appears in other wine-making cultures. But, I ask you, where else but in Vienna would you find sturm sold in such disparate places as: 1) a traditional Kaffeehaus, 2) a ritzy restaurant in the Museums Quartier, 3) a street festival, and 4) an Aldi (Austrian = Hofer)? If you have an idea, let me know.

Hochriegl Frizzante Acht

According to the bottle, the Hochriegl Frizzante Acht is a Viennese traditon. To me, it just tasted like any other sparkling wine.

I have not had incredible luck finding good wine in Vienna. In Austria, yes. In Vienna, no. I think back to a bottle of rosé I bought from Wein & Co. the first time I was in Vienna four years ago. It was terrible...though, to be fair, it followed a very good Kékfrancos (the one mentioned in this post, though not the titular Kékfrancos) bought in Budapest and accompanied by too many Mozartkugeln. From which the inevitable happened: one of us got sick, and both of us swore off Austrian wine.

Not a fair judgment to be sure. Personally, I have enjoyed many an Austrian wine since, and will continue to do so. But, as far as prosecco goes, it's a better bet to stick with the Italian varieties. I can honestly say I've had very good sparkling wine in  Italy - and, limited by budget, it's been 100% cheap-ass prosecco. Keep this in mind, friends:

V.C.'s Rules to Follow when Purchasing a Wine in Austria:
1. Austria is great for a Grüner Veltliner, a Zweigelt or sometimes a Blaufränkisch.
2. In Vienna, you will be gouged for French wines. Instead, buy Austrian.
3. Austria is really close to Italy, so Italian wines are cheaper than French ones. But not as cheap as Austrian.
4. Always buy Italian prosecco, even if it's not on sale.
5. When given the choice between a sale-priced French wine and an Italian wine, it's your call.
6. Similar to French wines, American wines are insanely overpriced. Something you could get at Festival Foods for $5 in Wisconsin (i.e. Turning Leaf) is priced roughly at €12. Just because it's imported.
7. Cheap is fine. Cheap-ass might get you in trouble*.

*For example, stay away from anything in a 2 liter plastic bottle, no matter how appealing the price may be.

Austro-Hugarian Flair: Esterházy Chardonnay Classic

The good thing about empires? They leave behind great wines! Another empire as we know, was also run on wine...

This delicious white wine is what all Chardonnays should be. A bit high on the price side at €7.80, it is seriously worth it! The notes are lemony, with a bit of mint after taste. It has the perfect body as well - not to heavy, not too light. Goldilocks would approve.

I got this at the local Merkur in Amstetten, but you can contact the vintners via this website.

A bit of information about the Esterházy name: the House of Esterházy (also spelled Eszterházy) was a Hungarian noble family who, once the Habsburgs took power, cuddled up to the Emperor and Empress. They stem from Pressburg (Pozsony) but also had a (more famous) chateau in Eisenstadt now the capital of the Austrian state of Burgenland. Like the Habsburgs themselves, the Esterházy family had a string for fortuitous (read: political) marriages that helped them become the largest landowners in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Today, the winery in Eisenstadt still produces "Maria Theresa's favorite wine" (the chardonnay) as well as a number of other delicious varieties that would make an empire proud!

Lenz Moser Selection 2009

Lenz Moser Grüner Veltliner; came in box

VC got this as a gift for being the judge of an English speaking competition in St. Pölten in March.

The flavor is a bit sweeter than the average Veltliner, which  could be accounted for with the "Selection" label. The bouquet is fruity, lots of citrus (lemon, and maybe even grapefruit). The palate is very like a Riesling, and went well with my veggie stir fry.

The 2010  Grüner Veltliner just won the International Wine Challenge 2011. That should tell you something! Prices for this particular wine I cannot share, because it was a gift. But, according to the website, you can get the wine for €6.30 per bottle, with the opportunity to join the Lenz Moser club, and buy wine. They also have the possibility to ship their wares to you throughout the world! Snazzy.

Where Have All the White Wines gone?

It's spring time, which means it't time to whip out delicious white wine, summer drinks and the like.

Recently, I had the chance to sample a fruity, new wine to go with all of the lovely springtime weather we've been having in Amstetten.

Called "Welcome," it is from the Winvino line of affordable Austrian wines: Danke (thank you) a Zweigelt, Welcome, the only Veltliner – and, thus, white wine of the bunch -  Zweisam (twosome) a Blaufränkisch/Zweigelt mix, Sternstund (magic moment) which is their cuvee wine…

For €3.59 at the local Penny Markt, Welcome is a delicious, yet inexpensive,  wine choice for the picky, broke consumer.  Sharing the wine aisle with 2-liter plastic bottles of Tafelwein (table wine), this Qualitätswein is sort of a big fish in a small pond…and one of the more expensive wines at the Aldi-esque Austrian market. Aside from the price, this white wine is a crisp, refreshing, with notes of lemon and green apple and went very well with my home-made hummus! 

The best thing about new wines in a typically dry wine is that they are somewhat sweeter (not being given the time to fully ferment) which makes them perfect entertaining wines. But unlike Riesling, Grüner Veltliner is not typically sickeningly sweet, and can thus be enjoyed with lots of things and by lots of people. Grüner Veltliner, unfortunately for those Stateside, is not commonly found outside of Austria - you'll have to do a bit of digging. It has been compared to Moscato (Muskatell)...but I shall not make that claim, as I think Moscato is sweeter.    

Veni, Vidi, Vici: Mamertino

Imagine: it is 59 BC and Julius Caesar has just been elected Consul of Rome ... for the first time. In celebration of the occasion, he sponsors the making of a new wine from Biancale and Trebbiano grapes. He christens this wine Mamertino and declares it the best stuff he's ever had. Some two thousand years later, his opinion does not seem too far off the mark. Possibly, several years later and after the "rug incident," Cleopatra stuck with him just for that wine ... although admittedly, politics aside, if one had to choose a #1 between Gaius Julius and Marcus Antonius, it's a no-brainer.

Caesar.  Antony.

No wonder she resorted to the asp. (Plutarch, Life of Antony, 86.1-3)

But perhaps the best white wine would have consoled her enough to live with her children in captivity, had that been an option the Living Isis would take. Because Mamertino is, in the words of my roommate, the incomparable VC, "Caesar's greatest achievement." She would also describe it as, "Yummy."

It is also cheap and pleasing to the palate. Although it's stocked at World Market for about $12/bottle, our local Woodman's (Employee-Owned Grocery Store) has it at a lovely discount of $9.99. Do yourself a favor and try this delicious, crisp but sweet, mellow but satisfying, ancient and modern Italian white.