Unexpected, excellent and affordable, Austria’s sparkling wines are worth stocking up on. Above, bottles resting in the cellar of Weingut Loimer (credit: Andreas Hofer).
The champagne buckets beckoned, the fat bottles cooling in them promising palate relief after hours of tasting seriously structured, high-acid whites and brooding reds. I’d never seen so many Austrian sparkling wines in one place, and they were all open for tasting, a special sideshow at the Vienna-based trade fair VieVinum last June.
The wines were so good I had to return the next morning, 9 am, to make sure it wasn’t just the cleansing joy...