AUSTRIA 2008 terry theise estate selections Imported by: Michael Skurnik Wines 575 Underhill Blvd, Suite 216 Syosset, New York 11791Tel 516•677•9300 www.skurnikwines.com “First of all, everything is unified, everything is linked together, everything is explained by something else and in turn explains another thing. There is nothing separate, that is, nothing that can be named or described separately. In order to describe the first impressions, the first sensations, it is necessary to describe all at once. The new world with which one comes into contact has no sides, so that it is impossible to describe first one side and then the other. All of it is visible at every point . .” - P.D. Ouspensky “Either Nature has a kind of consciousness, and therefore a purpose, or it does not. In our present state of development, there’s no way to know. It’s my experience that Nature — whether metallic (like my car) or organic (like a plant) or neither (like the wind) — behaves differently if one relates to it as though it is conscious; many have experienced consciousness in rocks, flora, fauna, and objects, but our subjective experi- ences are difficult to demonstrate and impossible to prove. If Nature has no conscious- ness or purpose, I don’t see how humanity can, so I choose to believe we all do. That’s my sense of things. Again, impossible to prove, especially when the evidence appears to point the other way.” - Michael Ventura i It was strange to fly into Austria knowing Erich Salomon wasn’t there any more. I hardly saw him frequently enough to call him a friend, but he inspired me in many ways, not least as a beacon of civility and affection in a world where these sometimes seem scarce. One day last December we received the news that Erich had died from the cancer with which he’d struggled for many years. It was the news I dreaded, and couldn’t believe would come. Just a few months ago Erich seemed so hale, emerging to greet me and my colleagues, joking about his chemo-baldness: “It’s my Bruce Willis phase.” He gamely kept us company, almost apologetically, in that heart-rending modesty the ill can dis- play. I wish he had stayed with us forever. Or at least into the evening, damn the next appointment: stayed to watch the stars and to sip wine and gossip. The evening we heard the news, I opened a bottle of the 1982 Pfaffenberg Riesling to drink with my own sweetheart, and to honor the memory of this sweetest of men. The wine came fresh from Erich’s cellar. He and his brother Bert were the only ones to know the value of unearthing these Saturnine bottles. It was like Erich to have kept them, or at least a few of them. This bottle was good, clean cork, good healthy color. Old wine does a trick, or some- thing that seems like a trick. It starts out almost stale and musty, smelling not of itself but of the cellar in which it lay dormant and beating. In the first instant most old wines smell alike; they smell like “old wines.” This one did. So we sat and drank this taciturn herald of time and memory, and thought about the man who made it. Seven years ago Erich renewed the 30-year lease on the vineyard from which it came, a site owned by the monks of the abbey of Passau, who to this day receive a tithe of the pro- duction. He told me the story of the ceremony, wondering who would be present for the next renewal, thirty years from now. The ‘82 sits in our glasses. And suddenly, miraculously, it transforms itself, it finds the fruit and tenderness with which it was born, it seems to exhale in pure relief, free at last from the confines of glass, and the dark cellar. It sits in the glasses of a man and woman who love each other, and who watch in wonder as it rises from the dead. December 4, 2007 ii table of contents Introduction . .1 The 2007 Vintage . .4 Grape Varieties . .7 Austrian Wine Laws . .10 Austrian Wine Culture . .11 Map of Austria . .14 Hirschmann Pumpkin Seed Oil . .15 Weingut Prieler . .16 Weinbau Heidi Schröck . .19 Weinbau Sattler . .23 Weingut Paul Lehrner . .25 Weingut Walter Glatzer . .27 A Little Essay About Nothing Much . .30 Weinviertal . .31 Weingut Schwarzböck . .32 Weingut H.u.M. Hofer . .34 Weingut Setzer . .36 Wagram . .38 Weingut Ecker . .39 Kremstal and Kamptal . .41 Weingut Erich and Maria Berger . .42 Weingut Familie Nigl . .44 Weingut Erich Salomon / Undhof . .48 I Started to Write this on Sunday . .51 Weingut Bründlmayer . .52 Weingut Schloss Gobelsburg . .58 Weingut Ludwig Hiedler . .63 The Matter of Globalization . .66 Weingut Josef Hirsch . .67 Wachau . .70 Leo Alzinger . .72 Weingut Josef Jamek . .75 Nikolaihof-Wachau . .77 Hans Reisetbauer . .82 Aspects of Flavor . .84 Taking a Stand . .86 iii Introduction It’s fifteen years this year, since this quixotic little cook up a quotable quote, but all that came out was You thing began. Back in 1994 the only thing anyone knew just keep whacking your head against the wall until the wall about Austrian wine was something to do with anti- starts to yield. “Why would you do that?” she wanted to freeze, or that maybe the wines were sort of like German know. (Doesn’t it, like, hurt?) wines—linked by umlauts, I like to say—and so why The answer is: conviction. bother. Fifteen years is a decent chunk of time. When I Because I am categorically certain there is no coun- was hanging around with Peter Schleimer on this trip I try on earth making better dry white wines than the best tried to remember what he looked like the morning we of these. Yet as much we we’re selling – and we’re selling met, while I was scoping the scene for great growers. a lot – I get the sense it hasn’t really stuck yet. Yes we had Peter’s been my guy-on-the-ground in Austria since the our Moment in the late ‘90s when Austrian wine in gen- beginning. He was freelancing for the Austrian Wine eral (and Grüner Veltliner in particular) was “trendy” Marketing Board and they sent him to assist me when I among young sommeliers, and to an extent we were off was putting the portfolio together. I’d never met the guy, and running. Then the shine wore off the trend and even so I sat in the lobby of my hotel and watched a range of younger somms went on to even more recherché wines, guys come in who could have been Peter, and hoped relegating Austria to the ranks of the merely modish. most of them weren’t, because they looked like no fun at This is a crime against the cosmos. all. Then this weird lanky guy shows up with a nubby One feels at-ease in Austria; the culture is more scraggle of beard and a wild-eyed look like an irritated explicitly youthful, nearly everyone speaks English, and terrapin and I’m thinking can’t possibly be him and of at this point the wine community has discernibly settled course it was. To my in. After many years of unending relief and experimentation and test- delight, that day and ing out, it has assumed its every day since. true form. Austria is Last year he and I and established now. She is a his two little guys had a Player. But what does she fun day and evening on bring to the game? The my final day, nothing spe- Austrian wine scene is no cial, just stuff that old longer mint, it doesn’t friends do. It struck me have that new-car smell. this year that many of It’s settling in to what it these friends have become actually is, showing its “old” friends, and here’s lines and creases, and something you’ll really what it will sustain. envy me for if you also Also changing is that loved The English Patient: restless spirit of envelope- Heidi Schröck took me to pushing, and this is a very meet the actual descendant of Count Almaszy, who lives good thing. It might be fun to gun the motor and watch in an atmospheric castle atop a big green hill with huge the rpms climb but sooner or later you have to cruise and views over an airy hillscape, and a garden just scraggly then you want the motor to hum, not yell. The commu- enough to be sincere. This was the pinnacle of a day that nity of Austrian vintners seems to be saying We are no started with me being served the largest schnitzel I have longer arriving; we are HERE. It remains a youthful wine ever seen, a monster that not only covered the plate but culture, and for every grower entering his thirties there’s was folded three times over and would have fed four another 20-something coming along. All the Wachau adults and a whole Chuck-e-Cheese full of kids. It came “names” have grown-up sons working at their sides. A with fries! Had I known the meeting with the Count was new wave of growers is invigorating the Weinviertel. In in my near future (Heidi was surprising me that day) I contrast to Germany, where many things still seem might have taken a more, shall we say, seemly approach (charmingly, delightfully) removed, Austria feels more to the aforesaid schnitzel.