AUSTRIA 2007 AUSTRIA terry theise estate selections “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 Front Cover Photo: A field of rapeseed in full May bloom. ii table of contents Introduction . .1 The 2006 Vintage . .4 Grape Varieties . .7 Austrian Wine Laws . .10 Austrian Wine Culture . .12 Map of Austria . .14 Hirschmann Pumpkin Seed Oil . .15 Weingut Prieler . .16 Weinbau Heidi Schröck . .18 Weinbau Sattler . .22 Weingut Paul Lehrner . .24 Weingut Walter Glatzer . .26 A Little Essay About Nothing Much . .29 Weinviertal . .31 Weingut Schwarzböck . .32 Weingut H.u.M. Hofer . .34 Weingut Setzer . .36 Wagram . .38 Weingut Ecker . .39 Kremstal and Kamptal . .40 Weingut Erich and Maria Berger . .41 Weingut Familie Nigl . .43 Weingut Erich Salomon / Undhof . .46 I Started to Write this on Sunday . .49 Weingut Bründlmayer . .50 Weingut Schloss Gobelsburg . .56 Weingut Ludwig Hiedler . .60 A Matter of Globalization . .64 Weingut Josef Hirsch . .65 Wachau . .68 Leo Alzinger . .70 Weingut Josef Jamek . .73 Nikolaihof-Wachau . .75 Hans Reisetbauer . .80 iii Introduction I think I’ll be perverse (me?) and start at the end. The to guy for quotes on swimming against the current and end was me taking a day off and hanging out with Peter seeding the unknown. When this thing started back in Schleimer and his two boys. Peter’s been my guy-on-the- 1994, what little anyone knew of Austrian wine was ground in Austria since the beginning. He was freelanc- wrong, and there was a whole new climate of excellence ing for the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and they sent and the story wasn’t told. “How is it done?” I was asked. him to assist me when I was putting the portfolio togeth- And I hemmed and hedged and tried to cook up a er. I’d never met the guy, so I sat in the lobby of my hotel quotable quote, but all that came out was You just keep and watched a range of guys come in who could have whacking your head against the wall until the wall starts to been Peter, and hoped most of them weren’t, because yield. “Why would you do that?” she wanted to know. they looked like no fun at all. Then this weird lanky guy (Doesn’t it, like, hurt?) shows up with a nubby scraggle of beard and a wild- The answer is: conviction. eyed look like an irritated terrapin and I’m thinking can’t Because I am categorically certain there is no coun- possibly be him and of course it was. To my unending try on earth making better dry white wines than the best relief and delight, that day and every day since. of these. Yet as much we we’re selling – and we’re selling Well, we’ve all gotten older and now Peter has these a lot – I get the sense it hasn’t really stuck yet. Yes we had two amazing little guys and I like being with them, and our Moment in the late ‘90s when Austrian wine in gen- with him with them. So we spent some time at the play- eral (and Grüner Veltliner in particular) was “trendy” ground and then took the boys to dinner, where we met among young sommeliers, and to an extent we were off their mom. We went to a very Zen place in the and running. Then the shine wore off the trend and even Wienerwald, which is a younger somms went on range of impossibly lyric to even more recherché green hills just west of the wines, relegating Austria city. The place is called to the ranks of the merely Hanner, and has rooms modish. This is a crime and two restaurants, a against the cosmos. fancy 2-Michelin-stars one I saw Austria and a simpler one where through different eyes the kids could get this year, as I had Robin schnitzels and frites and (Riddell) and Michele where they could romp (Parent) with me, our new within reason and no one regional agents. They’d would be incommoded – been with me to Germany except me since I was and Champagne, but envious of those yummy Austria is different. One looking schnitzels. feels more at-ease in Peter’s S.O. Andrea Austria; the culture is had passed a big exam that day, and it was my final night more explicitly youthful, nearly everyone speaks in Austria and we decided to order off the fancy menu. English, and at this point the wine community has dis- Drank Selosse Substance; that kind of night. Stayed at the cernibly settled in. After many years of experimentation table a little too long, but the kids were remarkably and testing out, it has assumed its true form. Austria is indulgent. Finally we piled back in the car to drive home. established now. She is a Player. But what does she bring It was a cold night with an imposing full moon that to the game? illuminated the hilltops, and Peter was playing Tom The Austrian wine scene is no longer mint, it doesn’t Waits singing “Little Man” and the kids were asleep in have that new-car smell. It’s settling in to what it actually their child seats back there in the dark car. It was one of is, showing its lines and creases, and what it will sustain. those moments of perfection that steals up on you and Also changing is that restless spirit of envelope- which you can neither expect nor contrive. Waits’ diesel- pushing, and this is a very good thing. It might be fun to grumble voice and the unearthly moonlight over the sil- gun the motor and watch the rpms climb but sooner or very hills, and our own little men all worn out after their later you have to cruise and then you want the motor to busy day; I feared almost to breathe lest I break the spell. hum, not yell. The community of Austrian vintners The next morning came the news of a killer frost in seems to be saying We are no longer arriving; we are HERE. the Kamptal, Wagram and Weinviertel regions, temps as It remains a youthful wine culture, and for every grower low as 27° F on vines dangerously early in what had been entering his thirties there’s another 20-something coming a warm Spring. And so it is; one man’s beauty is another along. All the Wachau “names” have grown-up sons man’s danger. working at their sides. A new wave of growers is invig- I got home to a message from a Washington Post orating the Weinviertel. In contrast to Germany, where writer who wanted to talk to me for a piece she was many things still seem (charmingly, delightfully) doing on Georgian wines. I seem to have become the go- removed, Austria feels more connected to the internation- 1 al wine-fraternity. You drive through a town that’s like an architectural diamond of the 17th century and arrive at a 21st-century tasting room; you meet a man who can tell you jokes in English and who just came from a tasting of twenty-three vintages of Grange-Hermitage. But when you taste his wines, you taste something quite specific and seemingly eternal. It’s a little dysphasic. If German wine is mystic, Austrian wine is corporeal, even sexual. That is perhaps because Austrian wine is more than “merely” Riesling (her Rieslings are about as celestially mystic as the variety can ever be), and it might also be that these are the most graceful high-alcohol wines on earth, hence you drink them as if they were medium- alcohol wines and pretty soon you get sorta dazed. it hard for a lowly Yank to get much of the stellar stuff. It’s quite pleasing to see more worthy growers find- Some of you will never get to taste what this country can ing American importers. I’m happy to have help raising do. Go there and get down. the tide. The market is healthy but interest is polarized, You don’t have to be any kind of hot-shot wine very strong on the coasts (and in urban restaurant-driv- “intellectual” to get at these wines, to sell them, to enjoy en markets everywhere), and still skittish in the less, um, them yourself.