Austrian sparkling wine – delicious and diverse

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...