Vintage Austria
MELK, Austria — Eight years ago, as I was leaving northwest Italy to drive to Austria, at least three Italian winemakers gave me the same address in Vienna: Vis-a-Vis. This minuscule wine bar, tucked at the end of a narrow alley, was a wonderful find. Standing at the bar, you could taste not only most of the great wines of Italy by the glass, but also the top wines from Austria, virtually unknown outside the country's borders at that time.
Owner Hans Weibel, a wine fanatic if ever there was one, began my Austrian wine education with a glass of an entrancing, bone-dry, minerally Riesling from a place called the Wachau. Just an hour's drive west of Vienna along the Danube, this is the premier region for dry white wines in Austria, he explained as he handed me another glass, this one a crisp white with a scent of green apples and white pepper. I had never tasted anything quite like it--made from Gruner Veltliner, the Wachau's other major grape. These were wines with the unique character and finesse that can only come from great vineyards combined with great winemaking.
I was so intrigued that I rented a car and set off to see the Wachau (pronounced, roughly, va-HOW). Although it's close enough to Vienna for a day trip, the Wachau makes an ideal two- or three-day excursion filled with vineyard strolls, visits to winemakers and leisurely meals at country restaurants. The region is also part of the well-known Danube Bike Trail, which extends from the German border town of Passau all the way to Vienna.
The Wachau follows a tiny portion of the Danube, about 20 miles, where the winding river carves out a steep, narrow valley between the 1,000-year-old market town of Krems and the Baroque splendor of the Benedictine abbey of Melk (the inspiration for Umberto Eco's novel of medieval intrigue, "The Name of the Rose"). Along the way are a string of medieval and Renaissance villages with half-timbered houses and steeply terraced vineyards that sweep down from the hilltops to the wide, meandering river.
The name Wachowia first appeared in a deed signed in 830, but vines have been grown here since Roman times. The north bank of the Danube is a patchwork of small wine estates where the indigenous Gruner Veltliner as well as riesling grapes are planted on steep stone terraces, in some places just one or two vines wide, built between the years 1000 and 1300. The best individual vineyards (called Riede) at the tops of the slopes were known for producing extraordinary wines as far back as the Middle Ages.
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