What an adventure for wine food pairing! We spent the afternoon sightseeing and bumping around some of the wine areas of Burgenland in Austria. Burgenland is a famous grape growing region and known worldwide for their delicious wines.
BigAL was on the "Starfighter Team " over 30 years ago ... flying with vintage airplanes low over the vineyards to scare the birds out of the area without hurting or killing them. The Starlings , in German are called "Star", can devastate the crops by stripping the vines of grapes. The planes fly low over the rows of grapes “fooling” the birds into thinking that the plane is a REALLY BIG BIRD and that they need to leave the area NOW!
Well, we searched the sky to see if any planes were flying and then followed … as we drove into the landing field we came upon a small shack manned by a couple of the wine growers supervising the action. Alfred got out of the car, exchanged a few words and soon Alfred, Houdini and I were invited in. Well, as you can see from the picture, the “house” was probably about 8’x10’, a table with benches and a couple of shelves and 2 very friendly wine growers … one who remembered Alfred from over 30 years ago.
Hans Beck spoke English and told me that over the years he had exported over 1,000,000 bottles of wine to the US … his wines were served exclusively on Austrian Airlines for several years. He just happened to have a couple of bottles of his “house” wine that they were tasting when we came in … of course, soon we were enjoying the wines, also. Oh MY … these wines were terrific … if these were his everyday wines, I can hardly wait to taste the “good beans” … LOL. In fact, we did get an invitation to come back at a later date for an exclusive wine sampling from his wine cellar … I can hardly wait!
I was lucky enough to get Hans Beck on video explaining his 2 house wines … take a listen …
Just imagine, enjoying a Cuvee Heideboden 2009 and a 2006 Zweigelt with the producer himself.
Wine tasting ... what a lot of fun. CHEERS!
No comments:
Post a Comment