Austria Part IV: A ton of pictures of Tuesday - Kamptal & Krems Day

We had spent Monday night in the Parkhotel in the small town of Krems. Tuesday morning, we headed to the estate of Johannes Hirsch, where we tasted the wines of Hirsch, Brundlmayer, Hiedler, and Schloss Gobelsberg.

Above is Michi Moosbrugger, winemaker at Schloss Gobelsberg. We are inside the tasting room here, which has bright natural sunlight coming in from the large windows that look out onto two important single vineyard sites, two mountains, one called Heiligenstein and the other called Gaisberg. These vineyard names are found in high end Rieslings and Gruner Veltliner bottlings from Kamptal producers.


Above shows the mountain Heiligenstein, which is composed of primary rock. Mostly Riesling grows there, as it does very well on a rocky soil. Below is another shot through another window of the Heiligenstein.

Below here is the Gaisberg. Mainly loess soil, so mostly there is a terroir for Gruner Veltliner.

After extensive tasting with the 4 producers, we had a great lunch in a vineyard. Below is one of our dishes - sweetbreads served with potatoes.

After the lunch, we got to go on a vineyard walk on the vineyard Kaferberg with Willi Brundlmayer. There were many terraced vineyards.

When we got to the top, we were surprised by a tasting of the Brundlmayer Brut Rose and Brut sparkling wines! Delicious. I tried to take artistic pics of this.

There was this nice structure built up there on top of the hill right in the vineyard where such tastings and maybe picnics could take place. Quite fancy!

Here is Willi Brundlmayer showing us the lyre training of the vines, the "V" shaped trellissing which allows for maximal sunlight exposure and also allowing the wind to blow through and dry the grapes after rains.

After all that we went to visit Salomon. We had to stay under cover as it was raining significantly. When the rain stopped, he opened his garage door and there was his vineyard right behind, rising up right in the town of Krems.

Here he is outside, after the rains have stopped.

After the tasting at Salomon, we walked in the old town part of Krems. This town has been around for over 1,000 years.

Below is me posing with our rep, Adam Zuckert from WineWise (distributor of Terry Theise portfolio in California).

We walked to this old Austria restaurant called Jell ("yell") and had ourselves a delicious pork filled dinner.

Below is the appetizer - homemade bacon/ham and a scoop of liver pate.

And our main course was roast pork with the cracklins, and then dumplings filled also with pork! There was also wild mushrooms and saurkraut.

These paired exeedingly well with the Rieslings and Gruner Veltliners that the winemakers brought, including some delicious 2002s and older vintages!