Austria
The renaissance of Austrian wine is in full swing. The dark age is a long time behind it and we are now in the era of masterpieces and inspiration. On these timely wine tours we’ll meet most of the great winemakers who are driving Austria forwards, taste awesome wines and receive wonderful hospitality.
We spend two nights in Burgenland on Lake Neusiedler, the largest steppe-lake in central Europe. Here we stay in Illmitz and taste some very good red and dry white wines as well as the famous sweet wines. We’ll meet the exuberant Willi Opitz, one of the world’s greatest sweet winemakers. Apart from wine tasting Willi likes to get us involved in the wine-making and picking grapes for his Beerenauslese. A few years ago A&C clients picked the first Trockenbeerenauslese of the year in Austria!
Across the lake in the pretty town of Rust, we have a talk and wine tasting at the Austrian Wine Academy with Dr Josef Schuller MW. We also taste at Feiler-Artinger and at the Schandl estate with Peter & Ursula Schandl and Ursula’s sister the acclaimed winemaker Heidi Schröck.
We head for the Danube valley vineyards to the west of Vienna next. On these fabulous wine holidays our base is the best hotel in the Wachau, the Relais & Châteaux Schlöss Durnstein overlooking the Danube.
Here we’ll discover why the dry Rieslings of the Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal are rated by many as the best in the world. Here in Austria however, they have to compete with the wines made from the local Gruner Veltliner, which can be superb.
We visit several of the great wineries of the Wachau: at F.W.W. we taste a wide selection of wines from the villages along the Danube; at the estate restaurant or ‘heuriger’ of the Knoll family, we taste their immaculate wines over lunch, and last but not least a family member from the famous F.X. Pichler join us for dinner. We visit the imposing Baroque abbey of Gottweig and return to Durnstein by boat.
In the side valley off the Danube, just to the north of Krems, we visit Schlöss Gobelsburg. Here, the charming Michael and Eva Moosbrugger kindly host dinner in the Monk’s refectory accompanied by their wines and those of Willi Brundelmeyer.
On the last day we have an optional visit to Heuriger Christ in Vienna, or you can spend the whole day in Vienna before our late afternoon flight home.
You will be struck by the amazing hospitality of the people, the sophistication of the cuisine, the sheer quality of the wines which is a testament to the wine-makers’ dedication.
Mostly Cloudy, 2C, Innsbruck
Vienna Wine & Opera
20 - 23 April 2010
Austria Wine Tour
29 October - 3 November 2007
Vienna Independent Opera
Contact us for dates.
