A free day in Vienna and a hatful of recommendations for lunch, many of which were either closed or impossible to find. My iPhone had given up on data so my life-raft (Google maps) was not the usual powerful tool in my weaponry. Relying on analogue techniques from ancient history: Metro maps, street plans and gut feel, I stumbled across a very posh place next to the KK Hofburg Theater.
I’ve just placed my first order with Naked Wines. Is this news? Not really, I suppose, but the strange thing is the reason why. Naked has persistently pestered me, offered free samples, discounts and special offers and I have resisted for over a year.
I attended EWBC 2010 and witnessed something very interesting. Naked founder, Rowan Gormley, (fortunately wearing clothes in front of several hundred people) standing side by side with Willi Klinger of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, a top guy by any standard, running a mass taste-off between 11 Austrian Wines.
If you are at the intersection of wine and social media, then you were probably at EWBC 2010 in Vienna this October.
It’s a diverse and eclectic group of folk: Wine-makers, journalists, blog authors, wine educators, PR people, sponsors. All have their own reasons for attending. Mine are manifold but the two most important are to meet really interesting people and to learn about really interesting wines.
Partly due to my own ignorance, and partly due to the lack of wines available in the UK, Austria has been a bit of a blind spot for me. The best I could say of most Austrian wines is that they broke the spellchecker. However, in a 3 day blitzkrieg of wine tastings I learnt that Austria has so much more to offer the world than Grüner Veltliner (not that ‘Gruvee’ itself is boring or ubiquitous).
I write this to capture a few favourites and, if I may, offer a few suggestions to the rare few amongst you with even less Austrian wine experience than me. These were some of the wines that torpedoed my subs…
Stumble It!
