Austrian white wines have been the darlings of the world’s more sophisticated sommeliers for some years now, but are wine drinkers ready for Austrian reds? In San Francisco, the cradle of Californian wine, the Chronicle last month devoted a long article to them. The forum on my website has been animatedly discussing the burning topic: “Are Austrian reds poised for a popularity explosion?” Last August a high-profile blind tasting was held with the top tasters of Singapore, who ended up preferring Austrian Pinot Noirs to many a famous red burgundy.
For the first time ever, therefore, I decided at the recent generic tasting of Austrian wines in London, an event held every year at the Institute of Directors, to ignore the whites made on the Danube upstream from the capital and to taste only reds – most of them made south and east of Vienna where Pannonian warmth spreads in from Hungary.
I can report that these wines must be very absorbing because my tasting speed seemed to be only about half what it usually is and I ended up for the first time ever being shooed out of the tasting room by the men from Sensible Wine Services, ostentatiously gathering up bottles, glasses, spittoons and ice buckets around me.