Austrian dining
Posted on 24 March 2009
Tomorrow is the Austrian trade tasting here in Warsaw; one of Poland’s most important events throughout the year. And tonight I met up with Willi Klinger and Christian Dworan of the Austrian Wine Marketing. At the C.K. Oboźnia wine bar & restaurant, we drank through some nice wines and discussed some exciting projects for the future, including a Polish food & Austrian wine matching campaign.
We ate well (asparagus risotto and spicy duck breast), drinking a mixed bunch of wines, including two reds, a very spicy (white pepper and caraway) Kirnbauer [K+K] Mittelburgenland DAC Classic 2006 that was a little green and tart, and a Heinrich Hartl Pinot Noir Classic 2007 that started as an oaky disaster and finished generous and tasty but banal. More luck with the whites: from Matthias Hager in the Kamptal came the Urgestein Grüner Veltliner 2007 that was a big, spicy animal with lots of phenolic ripeness and correspondingly little minerality (I would have preferred it the other way around), and the Schmelz Pichl Point Grüner Veltliner Smaragd 2007 which also very ripe but with better depth and poise.
Strangely enough, the most memorable wine of the evening came at the very beginning: fresh from the fermentation tank (well, almost), the
Schmelz Buschenberg Grüner Veltliner Steinfeder 2008 was light (11.5% alc.), exuberantly fresh, zesty, green and positive. I never drink Steinfeder (the lightest style of wine from the region of Wachau, which by law needs not exceed 11.5%) and generally dislike drinking Austrian whites this young, but this was a good example of how youthful and invigorating these newborns can be.I’ll be on the lookout for more of the same during the tasting tomorrow.
C.K. Oboźnia ‘wine lounge’ in Warsaw.