Planning on going to Austria with the boys this spring. We already have a bunch of solid producers in mind that we’d love to visit, but I’m also interested to hear if you have any suggestions - especially if you’ve been there yourself! Even better if you also have direct contact with the wineries, since it seems quite difficult at times to make them understand with a single email that we’re not just some random tourists looking for buzz, we’re dead serious and we mean business!
We’d love to visit Styria, since so many excellent producers are located there, but currently our itinerary covers just Wachau, Kamptal, Burgenland and Wien. So, any and all good recommendations regarding these regions are more than welcome!
(I was thinking of posting this to travel forum, but I suspect the post will get more and better exposure here)
It might very well get more responses here, but if everyone ignored the Travel and, ahem, Wine Tourism (most certainly the nature of this thread) forum, then we wouldn’t have one at all!
Yeah, well, that might be the problem! At least for me, I spend 99% of my time on Wine Talk and unless someone tags me or comments some of my comments, I never ever read the Travel / Wine tourism forum! So I know other people are more likely to get a reply from me on this forum than on the travel forum - I just had a hunch I’m not the only one here.
Well you are shooting yourself in the foot there. It’s actually some of the best information on the board, and the least amount of snarking.
I make a point of posting these things to try and encourage people like you to visit more often. It’s a great resource and could be even better if fewer people were so adverse to changing their habits! Lol.
What a memory - I think i told you that like 2-3 years ago. And I still have some of those nicer bottlings (his Gruners too!) I need to find a reason to open…if we ever meet up at the same event I’ll bring some.
@Otto_Forsberg as the story goes, ~30 days prior my trip to Austria in 2019 I was sold a bottle of basic Moric Blaufrankisch from a local wine shop because I told them we were going to Austria and my wife and I loved it. I went to their website, emailed them and Roland replied. He was honored someone traveling from so far away wanted to meet him/taste his wines, but he doesn’t own a vineyard/tasting room. He offered to host us at his “office” which happened to be between Vienna and Budapest. We had a car hired to take us on that route as we were going to Budapest after a few days in Vienna, so it was perfect Turns out its a home office, and we sat with Roland and his dog in his kitchen and living room for a few hours talking politics, geography, ancestry, sports and a little wine. This was all pre my days here on Wine Berserkers, but needless to say, it was the best and most unique tasting of my life. He opened an entire line up just for us and wouldn’t take a penny from us at the end.
1-2 days prior we hired a private guide to take us to the Wachau, and we went to Domaine Wachau and https://www.weingut-walter-denk.at/ - Domaine Wachau is very large and is a cooperative but lots to taste and try, but again super corporate/touristy and not really intimate. Again all pre Wine Berserkers day so I wasn’t here asking for recommendations or knowing the latest cool places to go, we just went where the tour guide took us. When we went to Melk Abbey and 1-2 other random places in the Wachau. We also had lunch at some tavern in the Wachau and our waiter looked like doppelgänger of Jeremy Renner and he had poor English but when we tried to ask him he laughed and said all Americans ask him that question.
Since this trip I’ve emailed back and forth with Roland 1-2x but maybe not in 4 years. So he doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall. If you DM me your email I am glad to email him and intro you, or you can try to email him and if he doesn’t respond I can try to do a follow up email. The email I used is the one on his website (OFFICE@MORIC.AT)
It’s not just me, it’s the way the forum is built! Well, at least until today, that is.
Because I normally just go back to the main Wine Talk page from these threads and don’t wander away unless I get any notifications. However! Now - at least on the desktop version - there’s a sidebar that shows all the different subforums, so it’s now much faster to navigate between one subforum and another one. And you also see when there are new messages.
So maybe that will help me - and people like me - to visit the other subfora more often. (However, things seemed pretty much unchanged on the mobile platform.)
Bründlmayer (along with Moric and Nikolaihof) have been already shortlisted in our initial plan! Can’t promise if we can get a visit to all the places, but probably at least some we will get to check out.
Nigl was originally left out, since we weren’t planning on going to Kremstal. However, since it is basically sandwiched between Wachau and Kamptal, it’s not an impossible idea. We’ll see!
My close friends did enjoy their stay at Nikolaihof—on that basis I can recommend it. And, it’s kind of a showy circus, apparently, but they had a blast visiting Willi Opitz. Just putting it out there for you. I wish I had first-hand information…..someday!
Yes- it’s homey- not five star luxury. A lot of history, but rooms are modernized. There’s a sauna and outdoor plunge pool. Quaint area. Food is home-cooking, but good. I remember it being quite affordable to stay at the inn. We only stayed one night on a quick stop from Munich to Salzburg on a non-wine focused trip. Wachau is stunning, wish I had more time.
We’re trying to get to Gobelsburg, mainly because I love them so much. Apparently they have some kind of enotourism tasting rounds for tourist groups, but that doesn’t sound that intriguing.
It’s still in the “maybe” pile. We’d rather visit Rudi than FX, but neither were in anyone’s top lists (well, one person would’ve loved to visit FX Pichler, but he was kind of overruled).
