Reimagining Pannonia

A map of vanished Pannonian wine culture is beginning to reemerge with regional heroes such as Roland Velich and Tamás Kis leading the way.
A map of vanished Pannonian wine culture is beginning to reemerge with regional heroes such as Roland Velich and Tamás Kis leading the way.
Rainer Schäfer writes about what he values most: wine, food, and soccer. The first wine that impressed him as a teenager was a Silvaner from Endingen, grown in the vineyard of his Kaiserstühl relatives. He's lived in Hamburg for 30 years and travels the wine regions of the world, always curious about dazzling personalities, surprising experiences, and unknown pleasures.
The world of sparkling wines is changing for the better. The number of producers approaching this beverage in serious, artisanal, and creative ways continues to climb. “Grower Sekt” from Austria and Germany is very much en vogue. We are witnessing a tremendous push to quality. For a long time, “mass over class” was the motto, especially in Germany. But for a new generation, awareness of terroir and a trend toward reducing residual sugar are increasingly the focus. No stone has been left unturned in Austria, either. For several years, Austrian Sekt has been governed by a three-tiered quality pyramid: “Sekt…...
Terry Theise. Until quite recently, I would have written “an importer of German and Austrian wine who needs no introduction.” But over the past year, the axis of wine, not to mention the world, has shifted. A slew of new wine lovers might just need to be brought up to speed on this pioneering champion of “umlaut-bearing wines” (a term Theise coined long before we or anyone else). Theise fell for German wine and wine culture while living in Munich in his 20s. When he returned to the U.S. in the early 1980s, he brought this zeal back with him. He…...
It is Friday night and I’m terrified. In 24 hours, a top sommelier is coming to our house for dinner. A sommelier who puts together the wine lists for a global restaurant group; a sommelier who has spent over 30 years training more somms than I’ve seen typos on a wine list; a sommelier who matches food and wine the way the rest of us match our Sunday outfits. And tomorrow, I’m responsible for the wine. My wife draws up a shopping list for the meal, blissfully unconcerned. “We’re not a restaurant,” she says, “why should she expect Michelin-starred cooking?”…...
It’s hard to think of any one who has had greater influence over where Austrian wine is heading than Schloss Gobelsburg proprietor and Austria’s Traditionsweingüter (ÖTW) chairman Michael Moosbrugger. In part two of their conversation, David Schildknecht sounds out Moosbrugger on classification, appellation, and how music can illuminate wine. The following interview – translated and edited by the interviewer – was conducted in writing as well as orally in spring 2022. Occasional excerpts from earlier conversations and correspondence have been interpolated. Consolidation under topical headings as well as the insertion of punctuation were at the interviewer’s discretion in an effort…...
Wine regions are threaded along the Danube, one after another, like a string of Chanel pearls. Wagram, Kamptal, Kremstal, Wachau. And Traisental — the only one that lies exclusively south of the Danube. Its namesake river, the Traisen, divides the valley as the Seine does Paris or the Gironde does Bordeaux, into left and right banks. The tiny region flaunts French finesse and cool avant-garde. But also a rustic, down-to-earth charm. In Paris, the Left Bank is the quartier of intellectuals and artists. Through Yves Saint Laurent it achieved world fame in fashion. Who or what sets the tone and…...
Gerhild Burkhard, founder of the International Sparkling Festival, reveals everything you've always wanted to know about sekt (*but were afraid to ask).
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