Last Thursday on November 8th, Blue Danube Wines supplied the wines for an Austrian Wine dinner at Café Venezia in Berkeley. It was a great opportunity for those not yet familiar with Austrian cuisine, to taste it while sipping some of the finest wines of that country.     Café Venezia is a nice, spacious restaurant on University Avenue that sits pleasantly far enough away from the student buzz of UC Berkeley, yet close enough to the town center to be very much a part of Berkeley. With high windows that look out to the street, you're beckoned in to a warm interior that is held up by a wonderfully friendly wait staff. The interior picks up on the restaurant's namesake with kitsch murals and a clothesline of laundry, while at the same time allows one to sit down, have a good meal, and feel pleasantly at home.     The four course dinner started with a tasty charcuterie plate of typical Austrian meats and cheese, paired with a new release of Grüner Veltliner from Schmelz winery. Grüner Veltliner, which accounts for over a third of Austria's vineyards, is one of the country's most famous varietals, having beaten world-class Chardonnays from the likes of Mondavi and Louis Latour in blind tastings organized by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board. The fresh, crisp, Grüner Veltliner Steinwand Federspiel from 2006 that we had matched perfectly the strong flavors of the smoked pork meat and Austrian paté.     The second course was definitely our favorite, with an expertly cooked Viennese schnitzel and a side of surprisingly delicious giblet gravy. The crispiness of the breading and the tenderness of the meat were just perfect. The wine paired with it was another one of our new releases from Schmelz winery, a Riesling Wachauer Weingebirge Federspiel from 2006, which was a bit drier than the Grüner Veltliner with a long finish that had a hint of white pepper. Riesling is the second most produced grape varietal in Austria. So with these two wines, we covered the most typical and well-known whites of the country.     Then came the reds with the slow-roasted goose cooked in the traditional St. Martin's Day style, stuffed with apple, orange, pear and marjoram. The wines we chose for such a full-flavoured dish were the the Zweigelt Siglos 2005 from the Heinrich winery, and the Cardinal Cuvée 1999 from Giefing. We started with the Zweigelt, the most widely-grown red grape variety in Austria, made from the famous Siglos vineyard of the Heinrich family. This light wine, somewhat similar to a Gamay, combines the bite and fruity character of the Blaufränkisch grape with the body of the St. Laurent, and so it is a very good pairing with poultry.     The Cardinal Cuvée, a blend of 60% Blaufränkisch, 25% Zweigelt and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, had a much deeper, full body. This wine has a harmonious taste of sweet wood and spicy, chocolate aromas with a hint of dry plums. Made of grapes from the oldest vines on the Giefing estate (40-50 years old), and aged for 26 months, the Cardinal Cuvée is not surprisingly the flagship wine of the winery.     But after all these delights we still one last thing in the menu: dessert. And it was, of course, a good old apple strudel paired with a late harvest sweet wine, the Welschriesling from 2001 by Rosenhof. This fragrant, lively wine, with its fruity finish and a hint of almonds and autumn leaves, was the perfect ending for a perfect dinner.     All in all it was a surprisingly well-balanced and harmonious meal considering. And although Café Venezia is obviously an Italian restaurant, it has a very creative chef that every so often likes to immerse herself in the cuisines of other countries. Thus, after extensive research, chef Cindy Deetz manage to recreate the flavors of a few classics of Austrian cuisine as if she was used to cooking them like her famous Sicilian spaghetti with meatballs that are a house favorite.

Prof. Dr.Tim P. reports from his recent trip to the Austrian wine regions:     After your tenth or twentieth or two hundredth winery visit, they all start to look the same—tanks over here, barrels over there, crush pad in the back, tasting room out front. The same is true for wine bars and wine lists: even the most creative combinations end up sounding familiar after a while. The next fancy wine tasting bears an uncanny resemblance to the last fancy wine tasting.
    
    And then there’s the Loisium, a wine experience absolutely in a class by itself. No; make that its own universe. It’s quite a package: whimsical, ultra-modern architecture linked with ancient wine cellars; spacey sound and light environments; a blend of wine history that’s half fact and all fantasy. You might expect this kind of edgy wine trip to pop up in New York or London or maybe Berlin — not in the middle of a vineyard in Langenlois, Kamptal, way out in the Austrian countryside, where it opened in September 2003. more...

This weekend we had guests from Styria, the only Austrian wine region where Gruener Veltliner is not king but where Sauvingnon Blanc, Muskateller, and Morillon (Chardonnay) shine. It also happens to be the birthplace of California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Styria's top wine maker Gerhard Wohlmuth came with his wife Maria and their friends from their home town Kitzeck. They were invited to present the Wohlmuth wines at the big Annual Styrian Ball which took place in Sacramento's Sheraton Hotel. And since wine is their life they were eager to tour the Californian wine country. One day it was Napa Valley, then it was on to Sonoma's Russian River, and finally to the Lodi Wine Center in the Central Valley.We started the day with a visit to the historic Niebaum-Coppola estate. Here are the Wohlmuths and the Schauers in front of a spectacular stained glass window. We all agreed that the flagship Rubicon 2000 was one of the finest wines we sampled that day, together with a rare Mondavi Fume Blanc Reserve, exclusively made from grapes grown in the I-bloc.     But Wohlmuth was as eager to let the Californians taste his wines as he was to taste theirs and to convince everybody that he is a world class wine maker himself. So we organized a small tasting group with wine writer Mike Dunne from the Sacramento Bee and a few Sacramento experts on good food and even better wine, including wine merchant David Berkley and Austrian born chef Ivonne Morgan from Cafe Vienna. The picture of course shows wine connoisseur Darrell Corti giving Gerhard Wohlmuth valuable

Everybody knows that we (Californians) have a governor with an Austrian background (and an Austrian accent !). And everybody knows Aaanold from one movie or the other or has seen him on TV. Probably only few fans have heard that Mr. Schwarzenegger's fav wine maker is Gerhard Wohlmuth, both of course hailing from the same Austrian wine region, Styria. Arnold's longing for home cooking in the US was so strong that he opened his own restaurant in Santa Monica, Schatzi on Main that dishes out traditional Austrian cuisine.     If you're talking about Austrian restaurants in the US you have to mention the expanding food empire of Wolfgang Puck. Many people have eaten in one of his restaurants, or have baked one of the gourmet pizzas sporting his name, or have watched one of his entertaining cooking shows on TV. Of course, Wolfgang is an Austrian hero too, born in the southern province of Carinthia. Thoroughly trained in France, Wolfgang continued in LA to pioneer Californian fusion cuisine with his distinct Austrian background as a major ingredient.     Then there are various wine makers who have this particular ethnic heritage in common, among them one of the founders of the Canadian Inniskillin estate. I doubt that many afficionados who love their famous ice wines are aware that the head wine maker, Karl Kaiser, is a native of Austria. It was KuK who learnt about making Eiswein during his time as a high school student in a Cistercian monastery boarding school in rural Austria.     But who would have imagined that there is an Austrian couple toiling away in the midst of Piemont's vineyards to produce Barbera and Moscato wines. Anneliese and Harry König are also managing a boarding house in historic surroundings, officially called the Azienda Vitivinicola Casa Re. Judging from their web site it must be a very cosy kind of place, so if you are travelling in Italy and you want to meet some real Austrians, go visit them. Then come back and tell us how the Austrians are doing in the heartland of Italian wine making.     We know this much already: if it has anything to do with food and wine, or tourism and hospitality, Austrians tend to overachieve. It does not matter in which corner of the world they happen to be, Austrians are always at home in a kitchen or a cellar and they are always willing to share the goodies!

This year's VinExpo Americas was the second exhibition of its kind in the US produced by the same folks who bring us the big and fancy Vin Expo in Bordeaux, the mother of all wine trade shows. It was held at the beginning of June in Chicago in a move away from New York where the first one was staged. Approximately 6000 professionals visited the show. A recap by the organizers is available online at the link build into the headline above.     Blue Danube Wine Company exhibited in the booth expertly put together and managed by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board. More than a dozen Austrian wineries were directly represented, joined by approximately a dozen US importers of Austrian wines. In all, more than 100 different wines were poured, providing visitors a fairly comprehensive insight into the different style of wines produced in the various wine regions in Austria. Judging from the feedback we received it is fair to say that visitors were surprised to discover that Austria has much more to offer than the ubiquitous GruVe which has started to make inroads in American wine shops and wine lists. They were also impressed by the overall high quality of Austrian wines which were well represented in this tasting. Alltogether, VinExpo served to support and expand the ongoing success Austrian wines are currently enjoying in the US market.     Also of note in the magnificent huge hall of the McCormick Center located beautifully at the shores of Lake Michigan was the very first appearance of a good dozen Hungarian wineries on US soil. In a last minute effort they had decided to make the big step across the seas and put their little toe in the deep and complex waters of the American wine market. Among the estates represented were some of our favorites: Attila Gere and Joszef Bock from red wine paradise, Villany, Tibor Gal from the Bikaver town of Eger, and Huba Szeremley from the famed vineyards of Badacsony at Lake Balaton. Sadly, most of these wines are still not available here.     We participated at VinExpo mainly to increase availability of these wines across the US. This really requires establishing a wider distribution network and finding partner companies who can cover one or more of the 50 states of the Union. Construction has started, let us know if you want to distribute any of the wines we import or if you know a distributor who wants to expand his portfolio with wines from Central-Eastern Europe.

In time for the recent VieVinum wine show in Vienna, the Austrian wine magazine Falstaff has published the English language wine guide for 2004/2005. The German language original has long been indispensable for anybody interested in Austrian wines and her wine makers. Here is the slimmed down English edition, published for the second time around. Great resource that includes maps and information about the key wine regions in this small--but Oh so beautiful--wine country.     The Ultimate Austrian Wine Guide 2004/2005,290 pages, colour     in Europe:     € 19,90     worldwide:     € 22,90     Falstaff Publishing Ltd.Inkustrasse 1-7, A-3400 Klosterneuburg     Tel.: 0043-2243-34798, Fax: 0043-2243-25840     redaktion@falstaff.at     www.falstaff.at

We have been waiting for the annual invitation to the big summer tasting hosted by Bay Area Riesling fan & wine merchant, Bill Mayer. Finally, his newsletter arrived with only a few weeks to go to the big event. Looks to us as if Bill still is the same sponti, except of the Berkeley variety, we were in Berlin some years ago. This time we've been surprised that it is already his 10th tasting in a row. More than 50 fine wines (mainly from Terry Theise's portfolio of German and Austrian wines) will be served for a fee of only $30.     We have experienced a couple of earlier tastings and can attest: they are always fun, there are usually plenty of fine wines to sample, and a good time is had by all. Well worth the money!     Saturday, July 31st, 2004     12 noon to 5pm     Oakland, California     call Bill Mayer at: (510) 549-2444 or write him at billmayer@sbcglobal.net     And keep Bill's advice in mind: Don't forget to spit!

Wine Enthusiast Magazine announced today that Inniskillin has been chosen as the New World Winery of the Year, citing the efforts of co-founders Karl Kaiser and Donald Ziraldo as the innovators and leaders of Canada's growing wine industry.     tizwine.com (An on-line magazine published in NZ!)     First off, Congratulations to Inniskillin for this well-earned award. They certainly have been instrumental in educating the North American consumer's taste buds to appreciate Eiswein (icewine). Along the way they innovated how to market and package fairly exotic and pricy wines. Little did we know that the winemaker of the team, Karl Kaiser, hails from Austria, where he grew up with the delicious Austrian style sweet wines, TBA (TrockenBeerenAuslese) and Eiswein. It certainly looks as if he brought a lot of his sweet ethnic heritage with him when he moved to Canada!