The temperature has been creeping up all week and it nudged 40 today. In anticipation of a hot day, I put together a plan that would give us a good excuse to spend much of the day in the air-conditioning of the car. We took the latest Falstaff guide and drove round the different vineyards with the intention of buying the top two wines of the region in the sweet, red and white categories (‘top’ being the highest scoring in the guide). As I was driving, I didn’t participate in the sampling, which I left to the boys, but as the bottles piled up, the anticipation mounted. We succeeded with the sweet and the white, but missed out on the red because Heinrich is closed on Saturdays and Pöckl’s rating was in brackets (which means that it is an estimate based on samplings from the barrel, with confirmation expected in November), so a couple of substitutes had to be made. We prepared a feast of cold collations, carefully chosen to accompany the wines (yes, you normally choose the wine to go with the food, but this way is so much more fun) and gave the wines a thorough road-test as the sun set over the Neusiedlersee. Oh my! I can’t remember the last time my taste buds encountered so much exquisiteness in such a short space of time. For the wine lovers amongst you, here was the final line-up (I’ve left my Falstaff in Vienna, so can’t remember the exact details, but will update when next there).
White: Andreas Gsellmann – Traminer (2013); Judith Beck – Pannobile weiss. Red: Pöckl – Admiral 2012 ; Judith Beck – Blaufränkisch Alte Lagen. Sweet: Tschida – Muscat Ottonel Schilfwein; Kracher – Muscat Ottonel.
Our tasters for the day. From L to R: Rudi, Markus, MisterMac
Hans Tschida gives us the guided tour. Just back from collecting a few gongs at the International Wine challenge in London.
And what does any of this have to do with ‘rutterkin’? As luck would have it, we spotted an amazingly purple car in Gols whilst visiting Gsellmann and although we didn’t see the driver, we just knew it belonged to that infamous bounder and rutterkin – yes, sound your horns for Mister Toad.
Day #199 of the second 365 project, where the daily pic is informed by the OED word of the day.