Gruner Veltliner

At one of our wine tasting evenings recently, we introduced the group to the Gruner Veltliner grape, which surprisingly enough, nobody had heard of before and none of them had tasted it either. It went down extremely well with them all - in fact it was their favourite wine of the evening. The one that we tasted was by Huber, their Alte Setzen 2006, from Traisental in Northern Austria. This then led to a discussion about visiting Austria, where one of my favourite places is the Wachau, where they also grow a lot of Gruner. I promised one of the group to let her know some more about when to visit and what the travel options are like. My friend in Austria gave me the following as a general guide... I also asked her to tell me about when the best time is to visit the Heurigen - which are small wine bars selling their own produced wine and other products such as home cured hams and sausages, and they are great fun to visit...


The best time to visit the Wachau .......... you have to remember that this is a very popular and well known stretch, in particular as there is a cycle path which goes from germany to Klosterneuburg and goes right along the Wachau. So in summer there are masses of cyclists. On the other hand, summer is weatherwise really good. Late spring and early autumn are the times I personally would prefer as chances are that weatherwise it is good . There is no problem getting there by train. Am attaching a link to the wachau train which is a local train which stops all along the various towns/villages. Although it is in German it does show fotos as well as routes etc which might be of use. If they really do decide to go there and have any questions just let me know. This is the link http://www.wachauerbahn.at/index Accommodation is not a problem as they are geared towards cyclists stopping for a night. If they were interested, they could also rent bikes and cycle through the wachau which is also wonderful (or so I have been told by german tourists !). As regards the Heurigen ..... they are open all year round but of course the nicest time is when you can sit outside so again, late spring to early autumn are best. As they all open for stretches of time dependent on the amount of wine they have there is always someone open.

So, maybe somewhere different for a wine trip sometime in the future??!