Österreich Wein: You’ll love it

In late May, I was able to enjoy yet another fantastic wine tasting that rarely comes along. On May 20, I was the guest of the Calgary Wine Meetup Group, which is a social group that gets together to taste and enjoy wine. With over 256 members, it is one of the largest of its kind in Canada. The wines tasted that evening were a number of interesting and rare Austrian wines.

Austrian wine, to be blunt, isn’t all that well known in Canada. We don’t see a lot of their wines and some of the stigma that goes along with German wines seems to have transferred to Austria. Best known for their white wines, most Canadian consumers wouldn’t be able to name an Austrian label available in their market. Thankfully, this is changing with a number of new wines coming to the market that are well priced and very well made.

The Austrian Wine group is lobbying hard to bring consumer awareness their way and Calgary is a relatively frequent target of their efforts. I missed them this year while I was away attending a wine show, but their former front man, Christian Finz is now based here in Calgary with the beverage importer Delancy Direct. He was able to persuade Austrian Wine to leave some sample bottles to use at future tastings.

I had no idea what to expect when I cruised up to their Northeast Calgary offices. I had heard muttering that there would be more than 20 wines and some rare old wines from Christian’s private collection, that knowing his taste in wine, would be worth the trip.

Showing up at 7 pm, I was shocked to meet the aforementioned wine meetup group and find out that myself and Calgary’s very own, Ms Vine and Dine, Linda Garson were “guests of honour.” There really weren’t many honours heaped upon my shoulders that night, but it was very nice to be welcome.

The tasting started promptly 20 minutes late and was skilfully led by Christian, who in addition to speaking Austrian, is a talented wine educator. Most of the wines that we tasted aren’t available in Canada, but a good number were and I have tried to point those ones out for your reference. Please forgive me if I have misspelled the names. DAC is part of the appellation system of Austria, similar to DOC in Italy or AOC in France.

The wines were:

Wiengut Stadtkrems Grüner-Veltliner Kremstal-Kremstal DAC 2009

Beautiful stuff, so fresh with lime and concrete notes pear, peach, and orange creamsicle true on the palate.

Weininger Grüner-Veltliner Vienna Hills 2009

Citrus and ginger, with rock candy and diminished pepper spice. Better and better with each sip, I would love to have this on the market.

Loimer Grüner-Veltliner Kamptal-Kamptal DAC 2009

Tons going on with dynamic mineral expression and great savoury notes. 91 points.

Hirsch Grüner-Veltliner Heiligenstein-Kamptal DAC 2007

This was packed with tons of white pepper, hints of banana and lime zest, with a slightest hint of celery salt. On the palate, a touch of CO2 and aside from what was on the nose, subtle honey notes and great mineral expression. 90 points

Malat Grüner-Veltliner Höllgraben-Kremstal DAC 2009

Lots of pepper and capsicum aromas along with rock candy and a slightly under ripe apple. Palate was so fresh with great varietal expression and a slightly funky finish that detracted from the overall experience. This is a slightly more “old school” G-V if you are interested in that sort of thing. Still great though. 89 points

Check back soon for more great wines from the Austria tasting.

Cheers!

Read part two of Tom's experience at the Austrian wine tasting.